Israel Bagrut Geography flashcards

31 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Dead Sea Transform

A left-lateral strike-slip fault separating the Arabian plate from the Sinai-Israel subplate; its movement created the Hula, Sea of Galilee, and Dead Sea basins along the Jordan rift.

Makhtesh

An erosion cirque unique to the Negev, formed when an anticline was breached and the soft inner rock was removed, leaving a rim of hard limestone, as at Ramon and Gadol.

Sharav (Khamsin)

A hot, dry, dust-laden easterly wind that affects Israel in spring and autumn, associated with a Cyprus low or Red Sea trough and capable of raising temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius.

Irano-Turanian steppe

A biogeographic belt of dwarf shrubs such as Artemisia that lies between the Mediterranean maquis and the Saharo-Arabian desert, receiving roughly 100-350 mm of annual rainfall.

Gush Dan

The Tel Aviv metropolitan core, containing about 40% of Israel's population and its main economic and financial center, extending along the coastal plain from Netanya to Ashdod.

Development town

A planned urban settlement established in the 1950s in peripheral regions such as the Galilee and Negev to disperse population and absorb immigrants, often with tax and grant incentives.

Haredi population share

The ultra-Orthodox Jewish sector, about 13% of Israel's population, growing at roughly 4% per year with high fertility, concentrated in Bnei Brak, Beit Shemesh, and Modi'in Illit.

Kibbutz

A collective rural settlement, historically based on shared property and labor, of which about 250 remain; many have privatized and shifted toward industry and services.

Drip irrigation

A micro-irrigation method delivering water directly to plant roots through emitters; developed in Israel by Netafim, it reduces water use by 30-50% compared with flood irrigation.

Shafdan

Israel's largest wastewater treatment and recycling plant, near Rishon LeZion, producing about 130 million cubic meters of treated effluent per year for Negev agriculture.

National Priority Area

A region designated by law for investment incentives such as tax benefits and grants, including development towns, the Galilee, and the Negev, to attract industry away from Gush Dan.

Arava winter vegetables

Peppers, tomatoes, and melons grown in the hot, dry Arava Valley for European winter markets, relying on brackish water, greenhouses, and air freight for export.

Sea of Galilee level

The water level of the freshwater lake at about -212 m, monitored against upper and lower red lines (about -208.8 m and -214.4 m) as a national water indicator.

Ramon Crater

The largest Negev makhtesh, about 40 km long, near Mitzpe Ramon; it is an erosion cirque rather than a volcanic crater, exposing colorful sandstone and limestone strata.

Kurkar ridge

A fossilized sandstone (aeolianite) ridge parallel to Israel's Mediterranean coast, formed during lower sea levels and now forming cliffs and the coastal aquifer's western boundary.

Golan Heights

A basalt plateau of about 1,200 km2 captured in 1967, with volcanic cones, the Hermon slopes, the Banias spring, and strategic water and military value.

Fertile Crescent

The arc of cultivable land from the Levant coast through the Tigris-Euphrates plain to the Persian Gulf, where early agriculture and urbanization developed.

Strait of Hormuz

A narrow chokepoint connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, through which a large share of world oil shipments passes, making it strategically vital.

Nile flow sources

About 85% of the Nile's flow originates in the Ethiopian Highlands (Blue Nile) and about 15% in the Equatorial Lakes (White Nile), making upstream dams a regional dispute.

Suez Canal

An artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt connecting the Mediterranean and Red Seas, carrying about 10% of world trade and a major source of Egyptian revenue.

Representative fraction

A map scale expressed as a ratio such as 1:50,000, meaning one unit on the map equals 50,000 of the same units on the ground.

Grid reference

A coordinate locating a point on a map, read as eastings before northings; a six-figure reference gives a 100 m square on a 1:50,000 map.

Aspect

The compass direction a slope faces; in Israel north- and west-facing slopes are moister and support denser Mediterranean vegetation, while south- and east-facing slopes are drier.

NDVI

The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, a satellite-derived measure of vegetation greenness used to monitor drought, desertification, and land-use change.

Water scarcity threshold

The benchmark of 500 cubic meters of renewable freshwater per capita per year, below which a country faces absolute water scarcity; Israel's natural supply is below this.

Desalination share

The proportion of Israel's domestic water supplied by Mediterranean seawater desalination plants, about 70-80%, from facilities such as Sorek, Hadera, and Ashkelon.

Red Sea-Dead Sea conduit

A proposed pipeline to desalinate Red Sea water and discharge brine to the shrinking Dead Sea, intended to stabilize its level but raising concerns about water mixing.

Deposit law

An Israeli law placing a refundable deposit on beverage containers to encourage their return and recycling, a standard example of polluter-pays environmental policy.

Israel Transverse Mercator

The national map projection and grid (ITM) used in Israeli atlases and topographic maps, with coordinates in meters based on the GRS80 ellipsoid.

Choropleth map

A thematic map shading areas by value, such as population density per square kilometer, suited to showing spatial variation of statistical data.

Gradient in percent

The slope calculated as vertical rise divided by horizontal run, multiplied by 100; a rise of 100 m over 2 km equals 5%.