Thoroughly revised and expanded from the 2012 edition (twice the number of pages, almost double the number of illustrations) this book pays tribute to the man and his diverse works and achievements. James Hutton (1726-1797) was one of the first environmentalists, a man ahead of his time. He developed a grand theory of the Earth in which he tried to make sense of a lifetime of observation and deduction about the way in which our planet functions. For example, he connected temperature with latitude. His measurements, with rudimentary thermometers, of temperature changes between the base and summit of Arthur's Seat, were remarkably accurate and he studied climate data from other parts of the world. A leading figure in the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment, he was also an innovative farmer, successful entrepreneur and a man with endless intellectual curiosity. The year 2026 will be the tercentenary of his birth. There will be many special events leading up to and in that year organised by The James Hutton Institute, Scotland's premier environmental and agricultural research organisation.

The written history and archaeological records of Central Scotland takes us back to Pictish times some 5,000 years ago. The geology of the area stretches back a further 400 million years. The oldest rocks are found near Lesmahagow and in the Pentland Hills. Known geologically as 'inliers'- small areas of rocks from an older age, surrounded by younger strata - these strata have yielded some of the oldest fish on earth and are highly prized for what they tell us about early life on the planet. Rocks of the Old Red Sandstone and the succeeding Carboniferous era underlie the rest of Central Scotland in almost equal measure. Explosive volcanic rocks, thick layers of lava, desert sandstones, limestones and productive coal measures make up this bedrock patchwork. Then, sometime later, a covering of ice, some two kilometres thick, blanketed the landscape. It sandpapered and burnished the bedrock into the familiar scenes we see today - our matchless Scottish landscape. The coal and iron ore which lay beneath the ground between Edinburgh and Glasgow provided the raw materials that drove the Industrial Revolution in Scotland, and the early focus on understanding the rocks beneath our feet was unsurprisingly initially concentrated on the most useful minerals resources.

A beautiful little guide to one of life's simple pleasures - pebble spotting. Where science meets mindfulness. Learn to appreciate their beauty, discover the amazing journey that brought them to you, search for the rare ones. Leave no stone unturned. Turn a day on the beach or a seaside holiday stroll into a treasure hunt with this lovely little guide to identifying pebbles. Pebble spotting is one of life's simple joys. There's nothing quite like searching the rocks on a beach until that special one catches your eye - a perfect shape, a gorgeous colour, an intriguing pattern. But what is it? Use this beautifully illustrated little guide to find out, and to discover your pebble's fascinating life story and secrets. It could be even more special than you thought... Geologist and passionate pebble spotter Clive Mitchell has created a charming and wonderfully browsable book that is a perfect companion to a day out or holiday, or an idle moment at home. This book contains entries on 40 different types of pebble, complete with detailed facts about the composite rock's structure and where to find them, with examples including: Flint Feldspar veins Spotted slates Serpentinite Granite ovoids The rare rhomb porphyry - the holy grail of pebble hunting The book includes a space to ruminate on your own findings, taking note of the treasures that you pick up along the way and discovering the secrets of the stones beneath your feet. The Pebble Spotter's Guide is the perfect introduction to everything you didn't know there was to know about the mindful pleasure of pebble spotting and the wonder of pebbles. Simply sit on a beach or next to a stream for 10 minutes and find amazing treasures at your feet; there is much to discover.

The Small Isles comprise the Inner Hebridean islands of Rum, Eigg, Canna and Muck. The landscapes, rocks and fossils of these beautiful, remote islands tells of a drama involving erupting volcanoes, an ancient ecosystem that included dinosaurs and an ancient desert landscape. The geological history stretches back 3 billion years to the earliest events recorded on Earth. All four islands owe their origin to a group of three adjacent volcanoes that were active around 60 million years ago. Rum is the eroded remains of the magma chamber of one of these volcanoes. Eigg and Muck are part of the lava field that extends north from the Mull volcano and Canna lies towards the southern extent of the lavas that flowed from the Skye volcano. The final event that left a mark on these islands was the Ice Age that started around 2.4 million years ago. Its effect on the landscape was profound. The thick cover of erosive ice shaped the contours of the land into the hills and glens that we are familiar with today.

Revealing the incredible diversity of fossilised plants and animals preserved for millions of years, this book profiles 300 examples of the most common and fascinating fossils, using an entry by entry approach. By including examples from all of the major variety of fossilised life, from preserved trees and grasses to molluscs, trilobites, fish and dinosaurs, Fossils offers a truly comprehensive overview of fossils from every continent and gives a sense of the huge amount of natural history available to us in the fossil record. Each fossil is illustrated with a clear and informative colour photograph, accompanied by informed and accessible text. The fossilised plants and animals are grouped by order, then within each order by family (and, where necessary, within each family by subfamilies). For easy reference, each entry includes a table of information on scientific name, order and family, habitat, distribution, geological period and dimensions.

This collection of works spans the breadth of the field of geology, with many titles coming from the Binghamton Symposia in Geomorphology series. Written by some of the world's leading experts in their fields, this set is a key reference resource.

The perfect stocking filler for beach lovers. A beautiful little guide to one of life's simple pleasures - pebble spotting. Where science meets mindfulness. Learn to appreciate their beauty, discover the amazing journey that brought them to you, search for the rare ones. Leave no stone unturned. Turn a day on the beach or a seaside holiday stroll into a treasure hunt with this lovely little guide to identifying pebbles. Pebble spotting is one of life's simple joys. There's nothing quite like searching the rocks on a beach until that special one catches your eye - a perfect shape, a gorgeous colour, an intriguing pattern. But what is it? Use this beautifully illustrated little guide to find out, and to discover your pebble's fascinating life story and secrets. It could be even more special than you thought... Geologist and passionate pebble spotter Clive Mitchell has created a charming and wonderfully browsable book that is a perfect companion to a day out or holiday, or an idle moment at home. This book contains entries on 40 different types of pebble, complete with detailed facts about the composite rock's structure and where to find them, with examples including: Flint Feldspar veins Spotted slates Serpentinite Granite ovoids The rare rhomb porphyry - the holy grail of pebble hunting The book includes a space to ruminate on your own findings, taking note of the treasures that you pick up along the way and discovering the secrets of the stones beneath your feet. The Pebble Spotter's Guide is the perfect introduction to everything you didn't know there was to know about the mindful pleasure of pebble spotting and the wonder of pebbles. Simply sit on a beach or next to a stream for 10 minutes and find amazing treasures at your feet; there is much to discover.

'An illuminating take on the British landscape ... a remarkable achievement. Encounters, warm humour, history and plenty of geology carry you down the winding tracks.' - Tom Chesshyre, author of Lost in the Lakes Travelling a thousand miles and across three billion years, Christopher Somerville (walking correspondent of The Times and author of Coast, The January Man and Ships of Heaven) sets out to interrogate the land beneath our feet, and how it has affected every aspect of human history from farming to house construction, the Industrial Revolution to the current climate crisis. In his thousand-mile journey, Somerville follows the story of Britain's unique geology, travelling from the three billion year old rocks of the Isle of Lewis, formed when the world was still molten, down the map south eastwards across bogs, over peaks and past quarry pits to the furthest corner of Essex where new land is being formed by nature and man. Demystifying the sometimes daunting technicalities of geology with humour and a characteristic lightness of touch, Somerville's book tells a story of humanity's reckless exploitation and a lemming-like surge towards self-annihilation but also shows seeds of hope as we learn how we might work with geology to avert a climate catastrophe. It cannot fail to change the way you see the world beyond your door.

Examines the various forms of evidence used to establish the history and scale of environmenal changes during the Quaternary. The evidence is extremely diverse, ranging from landforms and sediments to fossil assemblages and isotope ratios, bringing the book fully up to date since its last publication.

'Astounding ... To call this a "history" does not do justice to Helen Gordon's ambition' Simon Ings, Daily Telegraph 'Awe-inspiring ... She has imbued geological tales with a beauty and humanity' Shaoni Bhattacharya-Woodward, Mail on Sunday The story of the Earth is written into our landscape: it's there in the curves of hills, the colours of stone, surprising eruptions of vegetation. Wanting a fresh perspective on her own life, the writer Helen Gordon set out to read that epic narrative. Her odyssey takes her from the secret fossils of London to the 3-billion-year-old rocks of the Scottish Highlands, and from a state-of-the-art earthquake monitoring system in California to one of the world's most dangerous volcanic complexes in Naples. At every step, she finds that the apparently solid ground beneath our feet isn't quite as it seems.

Discover one of the Scottish Enlightenment's brightest stars. Among the giants of the Scottish Enlightenment, the name of James Hutton is overlooked. Yet his Theory of the Earth revolutionised the way we think about how our planet was formed and laid the foundation for the science of geology. He was in his time a doctor, a farmer, a businessman, a chemist yet he described himself as a philosopher - a seeker after truth. A friend of James Watt and of Adam Smith, he was a polymath, publishing papers on subjects as diverse as why it rains and a theory of language. He shunned status and official position, refused to give up his strong Scots accent and vulgar speech, loved jokes and could start a party in an empty room. Yet much of his story remains a mystery. His papers, library and mineral collection all vanished after his death and only a handful of letters survive. He seemed to be a lifelong bachelor, yet had a secret son whom he supported throughout his life. This book uses new sources and original documents to bring Hutton the man to life and places him firmly among the geniuses of his time.

A new collection of vibrant essays to inform, stimulate and inspire every nature lover. Times of darkness offer opportunities to reflect. In Mistletoe Winter, Roy Dennis offers his reflections on the natural world from the past year - from the welcome signs of change to the ongoing problems we are posing for nature, and what humankind can and must do about them. As in his companion volume, Cottongrass Summer, Roy Dennis balances his alarm at the crisis confronting the natural world with his own sense of optimism that new generations can make crucial changes for the future. One of our most prominent advocates for our planet and its species, he writes with insight and originality. This volume will provide inspiration and ideas for everyone who cares about our planet and its species.

DUST is unmistakably a major book in the making. This is a book with an extraordinary global story to tell, but - and - also with an ethical argument to advance. - Robert Macfarlane __________ Four-and-a-half billion years ago, Planet Earth was formed from a vast spinning nebula of cosmic dust, the detritus left over from the birth of the sun. Within the next hundred years, human life on swathes of the earth's surface will also end, in a haze of heat, drought and, again, dust. Dust is the legacy of twentieth-century progress and a profound threat to life in the twenty-first. And yet it's something we hardly ever consider - so small and so mundane as to be beyond the threshold of thought. All of history is recorded in the dust we create: the pollution we make, the fires we start, the chemicals we use, the volcanos that erupt. Now, for the first time DUST will examine this substance and reveal it's importance and the fascinating stories it has.

Delivering a synthesis of almost one hundred and fifty years of research into the Jordan Rift Valley, this genuinely comprehensive text presents a model explaining the tectonic evolution of this part of the Syrian-African Rift Valley, which may affect opinions regarding the geotectonic pattern of the entire western Levant.
Also including datings and paleoenvironmental reconstructions for all important phases in the history of the Jordan Valley, particular focus is placed on the last two million years, when numerous habitation sites, the oldest of which represents the initial spread of Man out of Africa, indicate the region was almost continuously populated.

These papers show how new research in the classic areas and Germany, but particularly in Eastern Europe, is radically altering views of the stratigraphy and palaeocology of the early-middle Pleistocene period, showing that major glaciations did not begin only in the late- middle Pleistocene.

The new edition of this work includes an appendix listing criteria for the identification of ichnotaxa. It covers all aspects of tiering trace fossil diversity and ichnoguilds, and is aimed at advanced undergraduates and postgraduates in palaeoecology, paleobiology and sedimentology.

The second revised edition of the Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science, provides both students and professionals with an up-to-date reference work on this important and highly varied area of research. There are lots of new articles, and many of the articles that appeared in the first edition have been updated to reflect advances in knowledge since 2006, when the original articles were written. The second edition will contain about 375 articles, written by leading experts around the world. This major reference work is richly illustrated with more than 3,000 illustrations, most of them in colour.

Research in the Quaternary sciences has advanced greatly in the last 10 years, especially since topics like global climate change, geologic hazards and soil erosion were put high on the political agenda. This second edition builds upon its award-winning predecessor to provide the reader assured quality along with essential updated coverage.Contains 357 broad-ranging articles (4310 pages) written at a level that allows undergraduate students to understand the material, while providing active researchers with a ready reference resource for information in the field. Facilitates teaching and learning.The first edition was regarded by many as the most significant single overview of Quaternary science ever, yet Editor-in-Chief, Scott Elias, has managed to surpass that in this second edition by securing even more expert reviews whilst retaining his renowned editorial consistency that enables readers to navigates seamlessly from one unfamiliar topic to the next.

The context for understanding global climate change today lies in the records of Earth's past. This is demonstrated by decades of paleoclimate research by scientists in organizations such as the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), the Antarctic Geological Drilling Program (ANDRILL), and many others.

The purpose of this full colour textbook is to put key data and published case studies of past climate change at your fingertips, so that you can experience the nature of paleoclimate reconstruction.

Using foundational geologic concepts, students explore a wide variety of topics, including: marine sediments, age determination, stable isotope paleoclimate proxies, Cenozoic climate change, climate cycles, polar climates, and abrupt warming and cooling events, students are invited to evaluate published scientific data, practice developing and testing hypotheses, and infer the broader implications of scientific results.

It is our philosophy that addressing "how we know" is as important as addressing "what we know" about past climate change. Making climate change science accessible is the goal of this book.

This book is intended for earth science students at a variety of levels studying paleoclimatology, oceanography, Quaternary science, or earth-system science.

Additional resources for this book can be found at: http: //www.wiley.com/go/stjohn/climatehistory.

A gorgeous guide to foraging, pressing and using seaweeds for a wealth of home creative projects. Both aspirational and inspirational, this guide to bringing the outdoors inside is quite unlike anything on the market and will inspire all readers to begin their beach foraging journey. A beautifully packaged, comprehensive visual guide to seaweed by design company Molesworth & Bird. Seaweed will inspire readers to look beyond the tangled piles of seaweed washed up at high tide, to discover its exceptional beauty and appreciate its many uses. The book celebrates the unique appeal of the plants and showcases the myriad ways to bring their beauty indoors, with the authors providing step-by-step activities so you can create your own prints at home. Whether pressing a deep khaki green Peacock’s Tail seaweed or creating a stunning cyanotype with Eelgrass, the possibilities are endless with this seashore bounty. The book is packed with glorious photography of the UK coastlines where the seaweeds can be foraged, alongside stylish interiors, and scenes of beach cook-outs and wild swimming spots. It also includes a library of pressed seaweeds presented in colour categories, with notes for identification and use. There is expert guidance on collecting seaweeds, and it will show how foraged seaweeds can be used at home for cooking, dyeing and printing fabrics, and as part of your skincare routine. It explores the fascinating history of seaweed collecting and investigates its potential as a healthy food source and sustainable material, whether foraged or farmed.

What would we have seen if we looked out over the landscape of Scotland at its very beginning, before the impact of mankind? What would it be like to swim in the Jurassic sea? Or stand early one morning in the dragon-fly haunted coal forests of the Midland Valley? This book captures in words, drawings, paintings and photographs the dramatic sceneries - erupting volcanoes, colliding continents - and ever-changing landscape of Scotland. A second volume by Andrew Kitchener, describing the origins of wildlife in Scotland, is scheduled for 2006.

The south of Scotland has a long and turbulent geological past. Perhaps most notably, it marks the place where, 432 million years ago, an ocean, once as wide as the north Atlantic, was compressed by a convergence of ancient lands and then ceased to be. Deserts covered the land with thick layers of brick-red coloured rocks, known as the Old Red Sandstone, piled up and dumped by rivers and streams that crisscrossed the area. Around 432 million years ago, violent explosive volcanic activity gave rise to the prominent landscape features recognised today as the Eildon Hills. In later geological times, the area was blanketed with massive sand dunes, later compressed to create the building stones from which Dumfries, Glasgow and other towns and cities, were constructed. It is also the place where the modern science of geology was born. James Hutton, star of the Scottish Enlightenment, found inspiration from his study of the local rocks. Sites he described almost 250 years ago are still hailed as amongst the most historic and important rock exposures to be found anywhere in the world.

"The Geologic Time Scale 2012," winner of a 2012 PROSE Award Honorable Mention for Best Multi-volume Reference in Science from the Association of American Publishers, is the framework for deciphering the history of our planet Earth. The authors have been at the forefront of chronostratigraphic research and initiatives to create an international geologic time scale for many years, and the charts in this book present the most up-to-date, international standard, as ratified by the International Commission on Stratigraphy and the International Union of Geological Sciences. This 2012 geologic time scale is an enhanced, improved and expanded version of the GTS2004, including chapters on planetary scales, the Cryogenian-Ediacaran periods/systems, a prehistory scale of human development, a survey of sequence stratigraphy, and an extensive compilation of stable-isotope chemostratigraphy.

This book is an essential reference for all geoscientists, including researchers, students, and petroleum and mining professionals. The presentation is non-technical and illustrated with numerous colour charts, maps and photographs. The book also includes a detachable wall chart of the complete time scale for use as a handy reference in the office, laboratory or field.

The most detailed international geologic time scale available that contextualizes information in one single reference for quick desktop access. Gives insights in the construction, strengths, and limitations of the geological time scale that greatly enhances its function and its utility. Aids understanding by combining with the mathematical and statistical methods to scaled composites of global succession of events. Meets the needs of a range of users at various points in the workflow (researchers extracting linear time from rock records, students recognizing the geologic stage by their content).

This book serves as a guide to discovering the most interesting volcano sites in Italy. Accompanied by some extraordinary contemporary images of active Neapolitan volcanoes, it explains the main volcanic processes that have been shaping the landscape of the Campania region and influencing human settlements in this area since Greek and Roman times and that have prompted leading international scientists to visit and study this natural volcanology laboratory. While volcanology is the central topic, the book also addresses other aspects related to the area's volcanism and is divided into three sections: 1) Neapolitan volcanic activity and processes (with a general introduction to volcanology and its development around Naples together with descriptions of the landscape and the main sites worth visiting); 2) Volcanoes and their interactions with local human settlements since the Bronze Age, recent population growth and the transformation of the territory; 3) The risks posed by Neapolitan Volcanoes, their recent activity and the problem of forecasting any future eruption.