Earth sciences

Diagenesis affects all sediments after their deposition and includes a fundamental suite of physical, chemical and biological processes that control the texture, mineralogy and fluid-flow properties of sedimentary rocks.

This third volume in the IAS Reprint Series reviews some of the major contributions that have been made over the last twenty years to our understanding of deep water environments.

Calcretes are an important component of many ancient fluvial, lacustrine and shallow-marine carbonate sequences, and they are widely developed in many parts of the world at the present time.

Over the years, many papers on carbonate diagenesis have been published in Sedimentology, the journal of the International Association of Sedimentologists.

Sedimentology Review is a new series of books edited by the Postgraduate Research Institute of Sedimentology (PRIS) and published by Blackwell Scientific Publications.

This IAS Special Publication #27 contains 17 of the papers presented at the IAS International Workshop on Reefs and Carbonate platforms in the Pacific and Indian oceans held in Sydney (July 1995).

Carbonate cements are very common and abundant in clastic sequences.

Participatory Research in Conservation and Rural Livelihoods: Doing Science Together starts from the understanding that all people create knowledge and that the creation of sustainable livelihoods and of conditions that protect and sustain rural ecosystems are interrelated.

Glacier-Permafrost Interactions A systematic exploration of the interactions between glaciers and permafrost In Glacier-Permafrost Interactions, experienced glaciologist Richard I.

Skyrocketing energy costs have spurred renewed interest in coal gasification.

In the late 18th century, Neptunists and Plutonists had controversial opinions about the formation of the Earth and its lithological units.

A biologist's firsthand account of encounters with the planet's most bizarre organismsand how these discoveries are challenging our most basic assumptions about life on EarthLife thrives in the deepest, darkest recesses of Earth's crustfrom methane seeps in the ocean floor to the highest reaches of Arctic permafrostand it is unlike anything seen on the surface.

Skyrocketing energy costs have spurred renewed interest in coal gasification.

This book combines the results of current research with essential background material to provide complete, in-depth coverage of every aspect of in situ and ex situ bioremediation, as well as an extensive overview of the physical and chemical processes currently available for treating petroleum-contaminated soils.

Remote sensing of impervious surfaces has matured using advances in geospatial technology so recent that its applications have received only sporadic coverage in remote sensing literature.

The lingo of soil science is a language unto itself.

Australopithecines, dinosaurs, trilobites--such fossils conjure up images of lost worlds filled with vanished organisms.

'A very well written book about geology and geological history' Sir David Attenborough, The Times'I travelled to Haverfordwest to get to the past.

Inside the epic quest to find life on the water-rich moons at the outer reaches of the solar systemWhere is the best place to find life beyond Earth?

Will most of the major fisheries of the world be exhausted by 2048, as has been claimed?

Fossils provide us with a tantalizing glimpse of Britain's prehistoric past and hold the key to unlocking the secrets of life's history and evolution.

Why are we drawn to the ocean each summer?

During the last 10 years numerical methods have begun to dominate paleontology.

This book chronicles how successive generations of natural philosophers, geologists and geomorphologists have come to invent the view of the Earth over the past 250 years.

Estuaries are complex and fascinating natural environments, where constantly changing water depths generate rapidly reversing currents and transport vast quantities of salt, heat, and sediment on a daily basis.

Almost all of the breakthroughs in understanding the atmosphere have been initiated by field observations, using a range of instrumental techniques.

Soil Erosion and Conservation provides a comprehensive treatment of the processes of soil erosion, the methods that can be used for their control, and the issues involved in designing and implementing soil conservation programmes.

This is a new and completely rewritten edition of the well-known text Microfossils (first published in 1980) covering all the major microfossil groups, with information on taxonomy, phylogeny, ecology and palaeoecology.

The scientific study of complex systems has transformed a wide range of disciplines in recent years, enabling researchers in both the natural and social sciences to model and predict phenomena as diverse as earthquakes, global warming, demographic patterns, financial crises, and the failure of materials.

Why seismologists still can't predict earthquakesAn earthquake can strike without warning and wreak horrific destruction and death, whether it's the catastrophic 2010 quake that took a devastating toll on the island nation of Haiti or a future great earthquake on the San Andreas Fault in California, which scientists know is inevitable.

The thrilling quest for subsurface life on Earth and other planetsDeep Life takes readers to uncharted regions deep beneath Earth's crust in search of life in extreme environments and reveals how astonishing new discoveries by geomicrobiologists are helping the quest to find life in the solar system.

Unraveling the mystery of the catastrophic age of extinctionsTwo hundred sixty million years ago, life on Earth suffered wave after wave of cataclysmic extinctions, with the worst wiping out nearly every species on the planet.

The Earth's climate system depends entirely on the Sun for its energy.

Australopithecines, dinosaurs, trilobites--such fossils conjure up images of lost worlds filled with vanished organisms.

In the 1990s Richard B.

A global history of the climate catastrophe caused by the Tambora eruptionWhen Indonesia's Mount Tambora erupted in 1815, it unleashed the most destructive wave of extreme weather the world has witnessed in thousands of years.

How does life on our planet respond to--and shape--climate?

This concise, sophisticated introduction to planetary climates explains the global physical and chemical processes that determine climate on any planet or major planetary satellite--from Mercury to Neptune and even large moons such as Saturn's Titan.

A critical examination of James Lovelock's controversial Gaia hypothesisOne of the enduring questions about our planet is how it has remained continuously habitable over vast stretches of geological time despite the fact that its atmosphere and climate are potentially unstable.

Sixty-five million years ago, a comet or asteroid larger than Mount Everest slammed into the Earth, inducing an explosion equivalent to the detonation of a hundred million hydrogen bombs.

The remarkable scientific story of how Earth became an oxygenated planetThe air we breathe is twenty-one percent oxygen, an amount higher than on any other known world.

Atmospheric chemistry is one of the fastest growing fields in the earth sciences.

As debates about the effects of fossil fuels on our climate and foreign policy intensify, the question of just how much longer we can depend on this finite source of energy becomes more and more pressing.

A gripping journey through the icy regions of our changing planetFrom the Arctic Ocean and ice sheets of Greenland, to the glaciers of the Andes and Himalayas, to the great frozen desert of Antarctica, The White Planet takes readers on a spellbinding scientific journey through the shrinking world of ice and snow to tell the story of the expeditions and discoveries that have transformed our understanding of global climate.

A severe thunderstorm morphs into a tornado that cuts a swath of destruction through Oklahoma.

The oceans exert a vital moderating influence on the Earth's climate system.

The cryosphere encompasses the Earth's snow and ice masses.

A concise guide to representing complex Earth systems using simple dynamic modelsMathematical Modeling of Earth's Dynamical Systems gives earth scientists the essential skills for translating chemical and physical systems into mathematical and computational models that provide enhanced insight into Earth's processes.

This textbook provides a unique and thorough look at the application of chemical biomarkers to aquatic ecosystems.

A must-have introduction to this fundamental driver of the climate systemThe Global Carbon Cycle is a short introduction to this essential geochemical driver of the Earth's climate system, written by one of the world's leading climate-science experts.