Seafloor surveying with acoustic remote sensing has become a powerful tool for researchers and professionals seeking knowledge about the structure and behavior of the seafloor. In particular, sidescan sonar is proving to be the preeminent technique, but its data is often difficult to interpret due to the physics of acoustic remote sensing, and to the varied geological processes at play. This handbook not only presents all the fundamentals but also explains how to interpret sidescan sonar imagery and bathymetry. It fully explores the most recent advances, both in the technology and in the knowledge of marine structures, and provides deep insights for interpretation and decision-making. Broadly expanded and updated from the previous 1997 Handbook of Seafloor Sonar Imagery, this handbook is indispensable to oceanographers, resource exploiters, telecommunications engineers, and marine researchers of all kinds."

Cryosols - permafrost - occupy a unique part of the earth and have properties greatly different from other soils. They also occur where the greatest impact of global warming is predicted. This is the first book bring together the leading researchers in the area of permafrost soils to produce a review of the geography, cryogenic soil forming processes, ecological processes, classification and use of soils that are affected by permafrost.

Decomposition of organic matter is a major ecosystem process involving an array of different organisms, including bacteria, fungi and invertebrates. The main objective of this book is to provide students and laboratory instructors at universities and professional ecologists with a broad range of established methods to study plant litter decomposition. Detailed protocols for direct use in the field or laboratory are presented in an easy to follow step-by-step format. A short introduction to each protocol reviews the ecological significance and principles of the technique and points to key references. Although most methods are described for freshwater ecosystems, many will work equally well in the presented or slightly modified form for studies in marine and terrestrial environments.

This book is the eighth volume of the proceedings of the 4th GeoShanghai International Conference that was held on May 27 - 30, 2018. This book, entitled Ground Improvement and Geosynthetics", presents the latest information on the new technologies and practical applications in various geotechnical engineering projects and advancements on ground improvement and geosynethetics. This volume presents detailed design procedures and examples to demonstrate the applications of the latest ground improvement technologies and innovative geosynethetics in geotechnical engineering. Topics include pile/column technology as foundations, retaining structures, or embankment supports, physical and chemical technologies for soil stabilization and ground improvement, geosynthetic reinforcement for roads, slopes, retaining walls, and foundations. Each of the papers included in this book received at least two positive peer reviews. The editors would like to express their sincerest appreciation to all of the anonymous reviewers all over the world, for their diligent work.

Soil formation is related to the nature of landforms on which that formation takes place. The nature of the soil affects some of the processes shaping the landforms and which cause landscape change. An accurate assessment of the evolution of landforms and of the patterns of soil formation is possible only if the interdependence of soils and landforms is recognized. This book provides an integration of geomorphology and pedology to fully assess this relationship. After an opening chapter outlining the approach adopted, specific chapters examine the relationships between soil formation and specific suites of landform assemblages. The highly influential catena concept is followed by an analysis of soil within drainage basins, on erosion surfaces, flood plains, river terraces, coastal plains, glacial and fluvioglacial landforms, deserts and periglacial landforms. The concluding chapter addresses the way in which soils can be used to assess major phases in landscape evolution. Undergraduate students and lecturers in geography or soil sciences will find this a valuable interdisciplinary introduction to soil geomorphology.

The general term granite is a deceptively simple name for a complex group of rocks that forms the most abundant material in the crust of the Earth. As a result of this complexity and abundance, granitic rocks have been at the centre of geological controversy for over 200 years.

Geological Structures and Maps: A Practical Guide, Fourth Edition is a highly illustrated guide that introduces the skills of interpreting a geological map and relating it to the morphology of the most important types of geological structures. Photographs of structures are set alongside their representations on maps. The maps used in exercises have been chosen to provide all of the realism of a survey map without the huge amount of data present so that readers can develop skills without becoming overwhelmed or confused. In particular, emphasis is placed throughout on developing the skill of three-dimensional visualization that is important to the geologist. Thoroughly revised, and with more international examples, it is ideal for use by students and practicing geologists.

Presented here is the story of the mining and sale of uranium and radium ore through biographical vignettes, chemistry, physics, geology, geography, occupational health, medical utilization, environmental safety and industrial history. Included are the people and places involved over the course of over 90 years of interconnected mining and sale of radium and uranium, finally ending in 1991 with the abandonment of radium paint and medical devices, Soviet nuclear parity, and the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.

In the last ten years offshore mineral exploration programmes have increasingly concentrated on the 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zones adjacent to coastal states. This book gives an integrated treatment of the various mineral types occuring in these zones, their genesis, distribution and economic importance. The book opens with a broad overview of the subject and discusses the legislative issues relevant to marine and mineral exploitation. Chapters then deal in turn with aggregates, placers, precious coral, phosphorites, manganese nodules, cobalt-rich manganese crusts and hydrothermal deposits. An international set of case studies illustrates each type of deposit, many studies based on the author's own experience in marine mineral evaluation programmes around the world during the past 25 years. This book should be of interest to economic and mining geologists, marine geologists and mineral economists.

This book highlights and discusses recent developments that have contributed to an improved understanding of observed mantle heterogeneities and their relation to the thermo-chemical state of Earth's mantle, which ultimately holds the key to unlocking the secrets of the evolution of our planet. This series of topical reviews and original contributions address 4 themes. Theme 1 covers topics in geophysics, including global and regional seismic tomography, electrical conductivity and seismic imaging of mantle discontinuities and heterogeneities in the upper mantle, transition zone and lower mantle. Theme 2 addresses geochemical views of the mantle including lithospheric evolution from analysis of mantle xenoliths, composition of the deep Earth and the effect of water on subduction-zone processes. Theme 3 discusses geodynamical perspectives on the global thermo-chemical structure of the deep mantle. Theme 4 covers application of mineral physics data and phase equilibrium computations to infer the regional-scale thermo-chemical structure of the mantle.

Clear, detailed line drawings show how to build flumes, rockers, dry washers, riffles, and sluices.

Self-organized criticality (SOC) has become a magic word in various scientific disciplines; it provides a framework for understanding complexity and scale invariance in systems showing irregular fluctuations. In the first 10 years after Per Bak and his co-workers presented their seminal idea, more than 2000 papers on this topic appeared. Seismology has been a field in earth sciences where the SOC concept has already deepened the understanding, but there seem to be much more examples in earth sciences where applying the SOC concept may be fruitful. After introducing the reader into the basics of fractals, chaos and SOC, the book presents established and new applications of SOC in earth sciences, namely earthquakes, forest fires, landslides and drainage networks.

Understanding Soils of Mountainous Landscapes: Sustainable Use of Soil Ecosystem Services and Management focuses on the patterns and processes of mountainous soils, including threats due to the fragile nature of mountain ecosystems, and the conservation and management of soil ecosystem services and restoration processes. The book covers a balanced approach to land and resource management, ensuring that environmentally and socio-culturally sound interventions are developed and applied in the complex geophysical, ecological, and social landscapes of the world's mountain systems. The book provides holistic understanding of mountain soils to help environmental and soil scientists gain insight and develop new problem-solving approaches. With obvious up- and downstream linkages (e.g., a large proportion of urban canters globally depend on water that originates in the mountains) as well as globalization (e.g., continental-scale impacts of air pollution and climate change on glaciers), the long-range success of conservation measures in mountain regions requires that the following discrete but interconnected interventions be pursued concurrently: (1) the protection of biodiversity and ecosystem services, (2) empowerment of mountain communities (including family farming), and (3) elaboration of more thoughtful, context-specific policy environments for sustainable mountain development.

This book integrates the analyses of organic carbon and carbonate accumulation in soil and lake sediment in a typical arid region of China that has experienced significant climate and land-use changes. It demonstrates that carbonate accumulation greatly exceeds organic carbon in both soil and sediment. It also shows that intensive cropping with sound land management in the arid land not only increases soil organic carbon stock, but also enhances accumulation of soil carbonate, particularly in subsoils. Carbon accumulation in the lake sediment increased between 1950 and 2000, after which it declined, and the authors explore how human activity and climate change may have caused the changes in carbon burial in the lake sediment. This book is of interest to researchers in a number of fields such as soil science, limnology and global change, as well as to the policy-makers.

Fractals have changed the way we understand and study nature. This change has been brought about mainly by the work of B. B. Mandelbrot and his book The Fractal Geometry of Nature. Now here is a book that collects articles treating fractals in the earth sciences. The themes chosen span, as is appropriate for a discourse on fractals, many orders of magnitude; including earthquakes, ocean floor topography, fractures, faults, mineral crystallinity, gold and silver deposition. There are also chapters on dynamical processes that are fractal, such as rivers, earthquakes, and a paper on self-organized criticality. Many of the chapters discuss how to estimate fractal dimensions, Hurst exponents, and other scaling exponents. This book, in a way, represents a snapshot of a field in which fractals has brought inspiration and a fresh look at familiar subjects. New ideas and attempts to quantify the world we see around us are found throughout. Many of these ideas will grow and inspire further work, others will be superseded by new observations and insights, most probably with future contributions by the authors of these chapters.

Reliable methods for monitoring and assessing soil quality are a prerequisite for successful soil bioremediation projects. The fifth volume of Soil Biology presents detailed descriptions of selected methods for evaluating, monitoring and assessing bioremediation treatments of soils contaminated with organic pollutants or heavy metals.

Traditional soil investigation techniques, including chemical, physical and microbiological methods, are complemented by the most suitable modern methods, such as the use of bioreporter technology, immunological, ecotoxicological or molecular assays. Feasibility studies for bioremediation treatments complete the manual. Easy-to-follow protocols with step-by-step procedures, lists of the required equipment and reagents as well as notes on the evaluation and quality control allow immediate application. Short introductions to the principles and objectives help to assess the field of application of each procedure.

The origin of granite has for long fascinated geologists though serious debate on the topic may be said to date from a famous meeting of the Geological Society of France in 1847. My own introduction to the subject began exactly one hundred years later when, in an interview with Profes sor H. H. Read, I entered his study as an amateur fossil collector and left it as a committed granite petrologist - after just ten minutes I can hardly aspire to convert my reader in so dramatic a way, yet this book is an attempt, however inadequate, to pass on the enthusiasm that I inherited, and which has been reinforced by innumerable discussions on the outcrop with granitologists of many nationalities and of many shades of opinion. Since the 1960s, interest in granites has been greatly stimulated by the thesis that granites image their source rocks in the inaccessible deep crust, and that their diversity is the result of varying global tectonic context. So great a body of new data and new ideas has accumulated that my attempt to review the whole field of granite studies must carry with it a possible charge of arrogance, especially as I have adopted the teaching device of presenting the material from a personal point of view with its thinly disguised prejudices."

A wide variety of problems are associated with the flow of shallow water, such as atmospheric flows, tides, storm surges, river and coastal flows, lake flows, tsunamis. Numerical simulation is an effective tool in solving them and a great variety of numerical methods are available. The first part of the book summarizes the basic physics of shallow-water flow needed to use numerical methods under various conditions. The second part gives an overview of possible numerical methods, together with their stability and accuracy properties as well as with an assessment of their performance under various conditions. This enables the reader to select a method for particular applications. Correct treatment of boundary conditions (often neglected) is emphasized. The major part of the book is about two-dimensional shallow-water equations but a discussion of the 3-D form is included. The book is intended for researchers and users of shallow-water models in oceanographic and meteorological institutes, hydraulic engineering and consulting. It also provides a major source of information for applied and numerical mathematicians.

This two-volume work is an effort to provide a common platform to environmental engineers, microbiologists, chemical scientists, plant physiologists and molecular biologists working with a common aim of sustainable solutions to varied environmental contamination issues. Chapters explore biological and non-biological strategies to minimize environmental pollution. Highly readable entries attempt to close the knowledge gap between plant - microbial associations and environmental remediation. Volume 2 focuses on the non-biological/chemical approaches for the cleanup of contaminated soils. Important concepts such as the role of metallic iron in the decontamination of hexavalent chromium polluted waters are highlighted; in addition, nanoscale materials and electrochemical approaches used in water and soil remediation are discussed; and the synthesis and characterization of cation composite exchange material and its application in removing toxic metals are elaborated in detail. Readers will also discover the major advances in the remediation of environmental pollutants by adsorption technologies.

As the world's population continues to expand, maintaining and indeed increasing agricultural productivity is more important than ever, though it is also more difficult than ever in the face of changing weather patterns that in some cases are leading to aridity and desertification. The absence of scientific soil inventories, especially in arid areas, leads to mistaken decisions about soil use that, in the end, reduce a region's capacity to feed its population, or to guarantee a clean water supply. Greater efficiency in soil use is possible when these resources are properly classified using international standards. Focusing on arid regions, this volume details soil classification from many countries. It is only once this information is properly assimilated by policymakers it becomes a foundation for informed decisions in land use planning for rational and sustainable uses.