acidic: An adjective for materials that contain acid. Acidic materials often are capable of dissolving away some minerals such as carbonate, or preventing their formation in the first place.
bivalve: An invertebrate that lives in a two-part, hinged shell. Most bivalves filter their food from the waters that slosh past them. Bivalves include clams, oysters, scallops and mussels.
carbon: A chemical element that is the physical basis of all life on Earth. Carbon exists freely as graphite and diamond. It is an important part of coal, limestone and petroleum, and is capable of self-bonding, chemically, to form an enormous number of chemically, biologically and commercially important molecules. (in climate studies) The term carbon sometimes will be used almost interchangeably with carbon dioxide to connote the potential impacts that some action, product, policy or process may have on long-term atmospheric warming.
colleague: Someone who works with another; a co-worker or team member.
dead zone: An area of open water where oxygen levels are so low that oxygen-dependent organisms cannot live.
ecosystem: A group of interacting living organisms — including microorganisms, plants and animals — and their physical environment within a particular climate. Examples include tropical reefs, rainforests, alpine meadows and polar tundra.
element: (in chemistry) Each of more than one hundred substances for which the smallest unit of each is a single atom. Examples include hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, lithium and uranium.
eruption: (in geoscience) The sudden bursting or spraying of hot material from deep inside a planet or moon and out through its surface. Volcanic eruptions on Earth usually send hot lava, hot gases or ash into the air and across surrounding land. In colder parts of the solar system, eruptions often involve liquid water spraying out through cracks in an icy crust. This happens on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn that is covered in ice.
extinct: An adjective that…
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