The ''Aral Sea Encyclopedia'' is the first one in the new series of encyclopedias about the seas of the former Soviet Union. Preparing it we faced certain difficulties. The thing is that this encyclopedia is a monument to the sea that is disappearing during our lifetime. The world community considers the situation with the Aral Sea and all changes that occurred in its whereabouts in the recent decades as one of the most serious, if not disastrous anthropogenic environmental crises of the 20th century. Before 1960, this was a water-abundant sea-lake that was fourth among world lakes after the Caspian Sea (USSR, Iran), the Great Lakes (USA, Canada) and Victoria Lake (Africa). This was a real ''pearl'' among the sands of the largest deserts, the Karakums and the Kyzylkums. Navigation between the sea ports Muinak and Aralsk and fisheries famous for the Aral breams, barbells, sturgeons, shemaya, and others were developed here. One could find beautiful recreational zones and beaches here. The deltas of the Amudarya, the major river of Central Asia, and the Syrdarya bringing their waters into the Aral Sea were famous for their biodiversity, fishery, muskrat rearing, reed prod- tion. The local population found occupations related to the water infrastructure.

Caribbean Tsunamis - A 500-Year History from 1498-1998 broadly characterizes the nature of tsunamis in the Caribbean Sea, while bearing in mind both scientific aspects as well as potential interest by the many governments and populations likely to be affected by the hazard. Comprehension of the nature of tsunamis and past effects is crucial for the awareness and education of populations at risk.
Audience: This book provides a thorough, yet highly accessible review of tsunamis in the Caribbean. It is of interest not only to tsunami and natural hazards specialists at academia and governmental institutes, but also to policy makers and to the general public.

In this book, the authors focus on the improvement of the scientific base for the development of environmental risk indicators measured by the presence of pollutants in water and porous media. In pursuit of a correct and complete numerical approach, they deliver insight into the understanding of integrated process, and also of modeling capabilities.

The Holocene provides students, researchers and lay-readers with the remarkable story of how the natural world has been transformed since the end of the last Ice Age around 15,000 years ago. This period has witnessed a shift from environmental changes determined by natural forces to those dominated by human actions, including those of climate and greenhouse gases. Understanding the environmental changes - both natural and anthropogenic - that have occurred during the Holocene is of crucial importance if we are to achieve a sustainable environmental future. Revised and updated to take full account of the most recent advances, the third edition of this classic text includes substantial material on the scientific methods that are used to reconstruct and date past environments, as well as new concepts such as the Anthropocene. The book is fully-illustrated, global in coverage, and contains case studies, a glossary and more than 500 new references.

The little-known history of how the Sahara was transformed from a green and fertile land into the largest hot desert in the world The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, equal in size to China or the United States. Yet, this arid expanse was once a verdant, pleasant land, fed by rivers and lakes. The Sahara sustained abundant plant and animal life, such as Nile perch, turtles, crocodiles, and hippos, and attracted prehistoric hunters and herders. What transformed this land of lakes into a sea of sands? When the Sahara Was Green describes the remarkable history of Earth's greatest desert-including why its climate changed, the impact this had on human populations, and how scientists uncovered the evidence for these extraordinary events. From the Sahara's origins as savanna woodland and grassland to its current arid incarnation, Martin Williams takes us on a vivid journey through time. He describes how the desert's ancient rocks were first fashioned, how dinosaurs roamed freely across the land, and how it was later covered in tall trees. Along the way, Williams addresses many questions: Why was the Sahara previously much wetter, and will it be so again? Did humans contribute to its desertification? What was the impact of extreme climatic episodes-such as prolonged droughts-upon the Sahara's geology, ecology, and inhabitants? Williams also shows how plants, animals, and humans have adapted to the Sahara and what lessons we might learn for living in harmony with the harshest, driest conditions in an ever-changing global environment. A valuable look at how an iconic region has changed over millions of years, When the Sahara Was Green reveals the desert's surprising past to reflect on its present, as well as its possible future.

This is the first book to cover the Holocene geology and geomorphology of the 9,200 kilometers of the Brazilian coast. It is written for third and fourth year undergraduates, post-graduate students, scientists and man- ers. It characterizes the Brazilian coast in terms of the Holocene geology, geomorphology, oceanographic and climatic conditions, and the location, morphology and evolution of the barrier types. Separate chapters outline the types of barriers and coastal dynamics in each state, beginning in the south and proceeding to the north. Some emphasis is placed on the stretches of coast where the detailed morphology and stratigraphy of b- riers has been previously determined. To date, the Brazilian coastal barriers have been largely ignored by the international community, partly perhaps because much of the past research has tended to concentrate on barrier islands, of which there are very few in Brazil. In contrast, the Brazilian coastal barriers display a much wider range of types than is generally assumed. The biggest and most spectacular transgressive dunefield barriers in the world exist in Brazil, and dominate the southern and northeastern coasts. Many have never been described - fore. This volume provides a wealth of information on Holocene barrier types, evolution and dynamics. It provides managers, ecologists, biologists and botanists with much needed information on the geology, geomorph- ogy and dynamics of the genesis, types, functioning and ecosystems of the Holocene barriers extending along the entire Brazilian coast.

A loving portrayal of our precious planet that offers easy-to-grasp discussions of scientific concepts and detailed examinations of Earth's tectonic, biological, and paleontological forces... Did you know that the history of Earth can be revealed by examining everything on it? From the esoteric science of minerals to the interactions between humans and their environment, our planet provides answers to every question we could ask about its history and what lies ahead. As climate change impacts everything we do on our planet, now is the time to take a closer look at what messages Earth has for us: what does it mean when the wind blows or the ground shifts? In this book, geologist Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim reveals the history of our planet through a geologic lens and explains why everyone should care about it. Song of the Earth is a thrilling biography of our planet that equips readers with the scientific, historical, and philosophical symbiosis between humans and Earth. Ervin-Blankenheim explores geologic principles of deep time, plate tectonics, and change in life forms in plain English. The book is illustrated with striking maps, diagrams, and pictures, allowing her to dissect everything from how a roiling, molten planet cooled to how the first cyanobacteria began to oxygenate the atmosphere to how the atmosphere has changed over time. Ervin-Blankenheim journeys through the science with ease and provides narrative sections about pioneering geologists and their groundbreaking discoveries. In viewing the planet as the integrated ecosystem it is, Ervin-Blankenheim showcases how land, water, life, and the atmosphere maintain an elegant yet delicate balance-one that, based on the author's evidence of current trends in the context of past planetary cataclysm, appears to be under imminent threat. At times both gripping and lovingly poetic, Song of the Earth shows not only how Earth has influenced life, but also how life has distinctly shaped our planet.

The present book combines three main aspects: five major mass extinctions; contributions on some other minor extinctions; and more importantly contributions on the current mass extinction. All three aspects are introduced through interesting studies of mass extinctions in diverse organisms ranging from small invertebrates to mammals and take account of the most accepted subjects discussing mass extinctions in insects, mammals, fishes, ostracods and molluscs.

Finding Time for the Old Stone Age explores a century of colourful debate over the age of our earliest ancestors. In the mid nineteenth century curious stone implements were found alongside the bones of extinct animals. Humans were evidently more ancient than had been supposed - but just how old were they? There were several clocks for Stone-Age (or Palaeolithic) time, and it would prove difficult to synchronize them. Conflicting timescales were drawn from the fields of geology, palaeontology, anthropology, and archaeology. Anne O'Connor draws on a wealth of lively, personal correspondence to explain the nature of these arguments. The trail leads from Britain to Continental Europe, Africa, and Asia, and extends beyond the world of professors, museum keepers, and officers of the Geological Survey: wine sellers, diamond merchants, papermakers, and clerks also proposed timescales for the Palaeolithic. This book brings their stories to light for the first time - stories that offer an intriguing insight into how knowledge was built up about the ancient British past.

The Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) was established on 17th December, 1931 by a great visionary Prof. Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis to promote research in the theory and applications of statistics as a new scienti c discipline in India. In 1959, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister of India introduced the ISI Act in the parliament and designated it as an Institution of National Importance because of its remarkable achievements in statistical work as well as its contribution to economic planning. Today, the Indian Statistical Institute occupies a prestigious position in the a- demic rmament. It has been a haven for bright and talented academics working in a number of disciplines. Its research faculty has done India proud in the arenas of Statistics, Mathematics, Economics, Computer Science, among others. Over s- enty ve years, it has grown into a massive banyan tree, like the institute emblem. The Institute now serves the nation as a uni ed and monolithic organization from different places, namely Kolkata, the Headquarters, Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai, three centers, a network of ve SQC-OR Units located at Mumbai, Pune, Baroda, Hyderabad and Coimbatore, and a branch ( eld station) at Giridih. The platinum jubilee celebrations of ISI have been launched by Honorable Prime Minister Prof. Manmohan Singh on December 24, 2006, and the Govt. of India has declared 29th June as the "Statistics Day" to commemorate the birthday of Prof. Mahalanobis nationally.

This book contains a selection of papers from the International Military Geology and Geography Conference, held at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York in June 2003. Studies in Military Geography and Geology expands a series of recent publications originating from conferences and symposia on military geology that began in 1994. The 25 contributions address a broad range of military topics ranging from the strategic perspective, through analyses of historical battles at the operational and tactical levels, to the use of advanced technologies applied to present-day military problems.

Mineralogical-sedimentological and geochemical investigations in combination with pollen data of a 12.7-m-long dated sediment core from Lake Silvana, SE Brazil, permit the reconstruction of the climatic history over the past 10,000 years. The lowermost section (I) reflects a coarse paleosol-type sediment with abundant plant debris and rootlets; pollen indicates grassland vegetation. Section II represents fine-grained lake sediments; pollen indicates a savanna-like vegetation. Section III represents a pollen-free, coarse-grained allogenic sediment deposited under high transportation energy (increased precipitation). Section IV, a greenish sequence with increasing C content towards the top, has a pollen spectrum of present-day vegetation (semideciduous forest). The different sediment sections show a connection with erosional phases in the catchment of the lake, based on mineralogy and geochemistry, which are a response to climate development.

Steep crustal-scale faults, having their origins in the Late Archean and Early Proterozoic and trending NE-SW, which define the fundamental block lithospheric structure of the North American craton, are seen from geological and geophysical evidence to continue far into the interior of the Late Proterozoic-Phanerozoic Canadian Cordilleran mobile megabelt. This suggests that variously reworked ex-cratonic basement blocks underlie much of the Cordillera. The western edge of the modern craton is probably near the Rocky Mountain-Omineca belt boundary; the Rocky Mountain fold-and-thrust belt on the east side of the Cordillera is evidently rootless and overlies the undisturbed cratonic basement. Phanerozoic differences between the Cordilleran tectonic belts, resulting from a long, dissimilar, multi-cycle history of waxing and waning orogenesis apparent from the rock record, lie chiefly in the degree of indigenous tectonic remobilization and reworking of the ancient crust.

Presenting new data on the now classical aspects of Gondwana geology, this work also highlights the increasing international interest as to how the Gondwana supercontinent was assembled. The book is organized according to three themes: assembly, evolution and dispersal, containing 57 papers of specialists in the area.
Assembly: Late Proterozoic-Early Palaeozoic mobile belts of Gondwana, South America, Africa & Australo-Antarctica.
Evolution: Detailed palynological & palaeontological research of Late Palaeozoic- Mesozoic palaeoclimate.
Dispersal: Novel approach to predicting past plate motions followed by series of papers covering the break-up history of Gondwana;

The NE Pacific Ocean is considered the birthplace of many fundamental ideas for modern plate tectonics theory. In this book the orogenic belts of this region are discussed in a single, internally consistent tectonic concept. Geological information is considered the most reliable. Geophysical models are tested for compatibility with observable geological data. The new concept avoids force-fitting interpretations to preconceived assumptions regarding accreted far-traveled terranes in the Cordillera and continental-oceanic plate interactions in the entire region.

Chemical modifications of supracrustal materials have occurred at various times in the Earth's history. This reference book gives an overlook over themost recent findings of isotope research in the sedimentary environment. The reader, interested in the diagnetic evolution of sediments, can use the book as a tool for the understanding of mineral-water interactions in the supracrustal level.

K.R. McClay Department of Geology, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, Egham, Surrey, England TW20 OEX. Since the first Thrust and Nappe Tectonics Conference in London in 1979 (McClay & Price 1981), and the Toulouse Meeting on Thrusting and Deformation in 1984 (Platt et al. 1986) there have been considerable advances in the study of thrust systems incorporating new field observations, conceptual models, mechanical models, analogue and numerical simulations, together with geophysical studies of thrust belts. Thrust Tectonics 1990 was an International Conference convened by the editor and held at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, Egham Surrey, from April 4th until April 7th 1990. There were one hundred and seventy participants from all continents except South America. The conference was generously sponsored by Brasoil U.K. Limited, BP Exploration, Chevron U.K. Limited, Clyde Petroleum, Enterprise Oil, Esso Exploration and Production UK Limited, and Shell U.K. Exploration and Production. One hundred and five contributions were presented at the meeting, - seventy six oral presentations (together with poster displays) and an additional twenty nine posters without oral presentation (McClay 1990, conference abstract volume).

Life has shaped the Earth, and the Earth has moulded the history of life. That history, the co-evolution of our ancestors and their horne, has much to teach us about our place on the planet today. We are part of the fabric of the biosphere. As we change that fabric we would be wise to understand how our horne was built. Our planet is neither a hotel nor a colony. It is not a place which life briefly inhabits during a transient occupation. Instead, it is our horne, designed by the deeds of our ancestors and suited to our own needs. The history of life on Earth is held in the geological record, which is composed of the rocks, water and air that are available for study on the planet's surface. These rocks, the oceans and the atmosphere are not simply stores of information for the excitement of fossil hunters and geochemists, or resources to exploit without thought. Their cre ation and continued existence form an integral part of the development and management of the Earth as the horne of life."

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.

Paleoceanographic conditions which led to the formation of the "mid"-cretaceous triad along the northern Tethys margin are elucidated. In the first part, the evolution of this sequence is traced from the demise of the platform to the return of the detritus dominated deposition. The second part includes a discussion of the reconstructed paleoceanographic and tectonic variables, their possible interaction as well as their influence on sediment properties.

'What are we going to do with a parcel of old stones?' wrote the director of an African museum a century and a half ago, when one of my ancestors presented him with a splendid collection of fossils of mammal-like reptiles. Old stones, however intriguing, are difficult to interpret, dusty, and do not fit well in the neatly ordered contents of a house of learning. Archaean geology, which is the study of the Earth's history in the period from after 9 the end of planetary accretion (4.5-4.4 x 10 years ago) up to the beginning 9 of the Proterozoic (2.5 x 10 years ago) is much the same - a parcel of old stones seemingly impossible to understand. Yet these stones contain the history of our origins: they can tell us a story that is interesting not just to the geologist (for whom this book is primarily written) but instead addresses the human condition in general.

Tectonics of the Eastern Continental Margin of India presents the different aspects of a passive margin such as its evolution, tectonics, and associated hazards, taking the Eastern Continental Margin of India (ECMI) as a case study. It discusses the passive margin and focuses on its origin, morphology, structure, and exploration potential; describes the major structural lineaments delineated from the geophysical data over the ECMI; and attempts to explain the geodynamic evolution of this passive margin. A preliminary estimate on the seismic hazards associated with ECMI is also presented in the book.

Archaean terrains contain a wealth of structural, stratigraphic, textural, mineralogical, geochemical and isotopic features allowing insights into the nature of the early Earth. This book is based on studies during 1964-2007 of Archaean terrains in Australia and to a lesser extent in South Africa and India, as well as on visits to Archaean terrains in Canada, the US and China, as well as petrological and geochemical studies of igneous and sedimentary rock suites from a range of terrains. The book will include a range of photographic and microscopic images, geological sketch maps and diagrams illustrating the lessons derived from field and the laboratory. Also other Archaean terrains are being reviewed. The book is intended for Earth scientists as well as broader intelligent readership.

This book includes an analysis of the Jehoash Inscription Tablet, which describes renovations made to the First Temple and is considered the only written evidence of its existence. At the same time, a new technique for authenticating artifacts is described: this is especially important in determining the authenticity of artifacts collected from unprovenanced sites. Other subjects treated in the book are: the only known stone oil lamp with carved onto seven nozzles, which was archaeometrically analyzed to verify its authenticity, and is thought to have been used during the Second Temple Period in rituals that necessitated that laws of purity be followed; and the James Ossuary, displaying the Aramaic inscription Ya'akov bar-Yosef akhui diYeshua (James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus), which, if genuine, might provide archaeological evidence for Jesus of Nazareth and indicate that the ossuary was that of James the Just, the older brother of Jesus.

This third edition of Reconstructing Quaternary Environments has been completely revised and updated to provide a new account of the history and scale of environmental changes during the Quaternary. The evidence is extremely diverse ranging from landforms and sediments to fossil assemblages and geochemical data, and includes new data from terrestrial, marine and ice-core records. Dating methods are described and evaluated, while the principles and practices of Quaternary stratigraphy are also discussed. The volume concludes with a new chapter which considers some of the key questions about the nature, causes and consequences of global climatic and environmental change over a range of temporal scales. This synthesis builds on the methods and approaches described earlier in the book to show how a number of exciting ideas that have emerged over the last two decades are providing new insights into the operation of the global earth-ocean-atmosphere system, and are now central to many areas of contemporary Quaternary research. This comprehensive and dynamic textbook is richly illustrated throughout with full-colour figures and photographs. The book will be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and professionals in Earth Science, Environmental Science, Physical Geography, Geology, Botany, Zoology, Ecology, Archaeology and Anthropology