This unit teaches you to read a landscape the way a geologist does: to see the history of erosion, deposition, climate, and human impact written into a place. You will produce a "biography" of a Chennai-area location. The vocabulary below is the working language of landscape reading.
Vocabulary
| Term | What it means + visual cue | Sentence stem |
|---|---|---|
| Weathering | The breaking down of rocks at the Earth's surface by water, ice, temperature change, plants, or chemicals. Different from erosion. Visual: Rock cracking from ice expansion in winter. | This rock shows evidence of weathering by ___. |
| Erosion | The movement of weathered material from one place to another by water, wind, ice, or gravity. Visual: Stream carrying sediment downhill. | Erosion at this location is caused mainly by ___. |
| Deposition | When eroded material is dropped and accumulates somewhere new. Beaches, deltas, and floodplains are deposition features. Visual: River slowing down at its mouth, dropping sand to form a delta. | This is a deposition landform because ___. |
| Sediment | Particles of rock, mineral, or organic material that have been weathered, eroded, and deposited. Visual: Layered jar of sand, silt, and clay. | The sediment here is mostly ___, which tells us ___. |
| Landform | A natural feature of the Earth's surface: mountain, valley, beach, delta, plateau, etc. Visual: Six small icons: mountain, valley, delta, beach, dune, cliff. | The dominant landform at this site is a ___. |
| Geologic time | The vast timescale of Earth's history (billions of years), in which slow processes produce huge changes. Visual: Clock face where one second equals millions of years. | Over geologic time, this landscape has ___. |
| Stratigraphy | The study of rock layers. Older layers sit below younger ones; reading them tells the order of past events. Visual: Cake cross-section with labeled layers, oldest at bottom. | The stratigraphy here shows that ___ happened before ___. |
| Geomorphology | The study of how landforms develop and change over time. Visual: Time-lapse arrow showing a hill eroding into a valley. | Geomorphology tells us this landscape formed by ___. |
| Monsoon | A seasonal wind pattern that brings heavy rain to South and Southeast Asia. Drives much of the surface change in Chennai. Visual: Curved arrow showing wind reversing direction with the seasons over India. | The monsoon affects this location by ___. |
| Watershed | The area of land where all water drains to a single river, lake, or sea. Also called a drainage basin. Visual: Bowl shape with arrows flowing toward a central stream. | This site sits in the ___ watershed, which drains to ___. |
| Coastline | The boundary between land and sea. Constantly changing through erosion, deposition, and sea-level change. Visual: Wavy line where waves meet beach. | This coastline is advancing / retreating because ___. |
| Aquifer | An underground layer of rock or sediment that holds and transmits groundwater. Visual: Cross-section showing water-filled porous rock below the surface. | The aquifer beneath this location is ___ and is recharged by ___. |
| Sea-level change | Long-term rise or fall in the average height of the ocean surface. Caused by ice volume, thermal expansion, and tectonics. Visual: Two horizontal lines on a coastline, past and present sea level. | Sea-level change at this site means ___. |
| Human modification | Changes to a landscape caused by people: building, draining, dredging, paving, planting, mining. Visual: Bulldozer and concrete next to natural ground. | Humans have modified this location by ___. |
| Projection | A scientifically-grounded prediction of future change based on current trends and models. Visual: Graph with solid past line and dashed future line. | Projections suggest this location will ___ by ___. |
Photo-walk. I will show you 3 photographs of Chennai-area locations. For each photo, write 3 vocabulary terms that apply and one sentence explaining what story the landscape is telling.
With a partner: take turns describing what you would expect to see at one of the 9 Unit 2 location options if you visited it. Use at least 4 terms from this list. Your partner's job is to listen and ask "how do you know?" after each claim.
Multilingual reference
For translations of these terms into Tamil, Hindi, French, Korean, or Japanese, see the Master Vocabulary Reference: U2 section. The five-column translation tables there are an AI-assisted starting reference: verify with a native-speaker peer or teacher when precision matters.
If you would like to discuss any of these terms in your first language with an AI tutor, you may. Document that use in the AI Documentation section of any assessment that follows. See the AI Documentation Protocol.