Contains 17 contributed chapters on the geology and tectonics of Panama, Costa Rica, and offshore areas. Five chapters describe onshore geology, three describe a combination of onshore geology and offshore marine geophysical data and attempt land-sea correlations, six describe marine geophysical dat

"AAPG Memoir 79, The Circum-Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, is the first volume in more than a decade to document such a wide range of research on the geology of this vast area. Of the total 44 papers, roughly two-thirds pertain to the Gulf of Mexico, with an emphasis on the Mexican portion of the basin, and to the petroliferous areas of the southern Caribbean, including Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba, and Trinidad and Tobago. The remaining papers relate to the Antilles and Central America, as well as a series of papers that address region-wide topics such as plate tectonic evolution. A significant number of papers were contributed by authors from national oil companies and universities from within the region." --AAPG.

The volume reviews current knowledge of transform margins and addresses fundamental questions for future research. Furthermore, the articles look at principal factors that influence the dynamics, kinematics and thermal regimes of continental break-up at transform margins and cover geophysics (bathymetry, seismic, gravity and magnetic studies), structural geology, sedimentology, geochemistry, plate reconstruction and thermo-mechanical numerical modelling.

This book examines one of the most important and complex of the world's tropical rainforest regions: the greater Panama Canal Watershed. The Rio Chagres is the primary water source for operating the Canal, and supplies potable water for municipal use and electricity generation, but science has left this important national resource largely unstudied. The text promotes understanding of the physical and ecological components of an isolated and largely pristine tropical rainforest.

The 19 original papers on the tectonic evolution of mountain systems were collected to mark the 50th anniversary of Price's description of the Canadian Cordillera. A sampling of topics turns up the driving mechanism and three-dimensional circulation of plate tectonics, the Belt-Purcell Basic as the keystone of the Rocky Mountain fold-and-thrust belt in the US and Canada, Silurian-Devonian orogenic events in the central Appalachians and the crystalline southern Appalachians, and defining the eastern boundary of the North Asian craton from structural and subsidence history studies of the Verkhoyansk fold-and-thrust belt. A fold-out sheet of color maps and diagrams is tucked into a pocket inside the back cover.

This book considers Pacific, in-situ and hybrid models for the origin of the Caribbean and includes new data on tectonics, igneous and metamorphic geology, stratigraphy and palaeontology. Following regional discussions, papers on local geology are arranged in circum-Caribbean succession and finally focus on the plate interior.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the geological evolution of the Northern Andes and contiguous shield areas, with a focus upon Colombia. Updated geological interpretations are supported by modern lithogeochemical, seismic, gravity and magnetic data and radiogenic isotope and radiometric age determinations. The composite data permits a detailed interpretation of the tectono-magmatic history of the Northern Andean Block, including the Andes of Colombia, northern Ecuador, western Venezuela and eastern Panamá. Tectonic reconstructions based upon characterization of more than thirty litho-tectonic and morpho-structural units, terrane assemblages and tectonic realms, and their bounding suture and fault systems, highlight the intimate and complementary Mesozoic-Cenozoic history of the Northern Andean Block and the Pacific and Caribbean Plates. The complex nature of Northern Andean assembly contrasts with ‘‘classical’’ Central Andean ‘‘Cordilleran-type’’ orogenic models. Differences render the application of typical Cordilleran-type models inappropriate for the Colombian Andes. The importance of underlying Proterozoic through mid-Mesozoic elements, in the development of Meso-Cenozoic Northern Andean orogeny-phase tectonic configurations is analyzed in the light of spatial-temporal studies and reconstructions related to basin formation, sedimentation, deformation, uplift mechanisms, structural style and magmatic evolution. The pre-Andean architecture of north western South America has played a pre-determinative role in the development of the Northern Andean orogenic system. 16 contributions analyze key stratigraphic, structural, metamorphic, magmatic and tectonic questions, and provide solutions as far as the most recent published field-based studies permit. The volume provides geological interpretations and tectonic models which contrast with repetitive theoretical proposals frequently found in the available literature.

Hardcover plus CD