"Home to more than 10,000 thermal features, Yellowstone has experienced over 20 large hydrothermal explosions producing craters from 100 to over 2500 meters in diameter during the past 16,000 years. Using new mapping, sampling, and analysis techniques, this volume documents a broad spectrum of ages and geologic settings for these events and considers additional processes and alternative triggering mechanisms that have not been explored in previous studies. Although large hydrothermal explosions are rare on the human time scale, the potential for future explosions in Yellowstone is not insignificant, and events large enough to create a 100-m-wide crater might be expected every 200 years. This work presents information useful for determining the timing, distribution, and possible causes of these events in Yellowstone, which will aid in the planning of monitoring strategies and the anticipation of hydrothermal explosions."--Publisher's description.

If a trip to an active volcano is your idea of a dream adventure, then perhaps a career in volcanology is for you! Through case studies, photographs, interviews, and facts, you'll discover what it means to be a volcanologist, why we need them, and how you can become one too.

This new edition of The Geysers of Yellowstone is the most up-to-date and comprehensive reference to the geysers of Yellowstone National Park, describing in detail each of the more than five hundred geysers in the park. The entire text has been revised and geyser descriptions have been updated based on activity observed through early 2018. Information about a number of significant new geyser developments has been added, as well as recent knowledge about some of the world’s geyser fields outside Yellowstone. Both a reference work and a fine introduction to the nature of geyser activity, this popular field guide includes a glossary of key terms, a comprehensive appendix that discusses other geyser areas of the world, detailed maps of each geyser basin, and tables for easy reference. The Geysers of Yellowstone will continue to serve geyser gazers as well as newcomers to geothermal phenomena for years to come.

This book contains 12 chapters dealing with the studies on volcanoes, their geological and geophysical setting, the theoretical aspects and the numerical modeling on volcanoes, the applications of volcanoes to the industry, and the impact of volcanoes on the human health, in different geological settings and using several techniques and methods, including the volcanology, the seismology, the statistical methods to assess the correlation between seismic and volcanic activity (modified Ripley's K-function to regional seismicity), the field geological survey of volcanic successions, the analytical methods of petrologic analysis, the petrography of the volcanic rocks with the individuation of the modal compositions of volcanic rocks and their comparison with major elements and trace elements in variation diagrams, and the argon isotopic measurements performed through the peak height comparison (unspiked) method. The oceanographic methods have also been applied to case studies of submarine volcanic edifices located in the Canary Islands (Atlantic Ocean), including the sampling of the water column with a conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) sensor rosette with 24 Niskin bottles, in order to determinate key physical and chemical parameters, such as the total-scale pH, the total dissolved inorganic carbon (C), the total alkalinity (A), the temperature, the salinity, and the dissolved oxygen. Problems of volcanic risk mitigation have also been treated, regarding the eruption disasters in Indonesia, a country where a high number of people live next to the volcanoes, and characterized by the lack of public awareness of the eruption disasters. Petrographic methods have been successfully applied to the study of the Cretaceous magmatism of the layered gabbroids of the Chukotka region (Pekulney Ridge, Russia), and geodynamic implications have been successfully established through geological and petrographic studies. The relationships among the mantle wedge, the convective heat and mass transfer, the infiltration metasomatism, the zoning, and the mathematical models have been applied to the comprehension of complex volcanic areas through the theoretical aspects of volcanic studies on magmatic chambers coupled with numerical modeling, including finite element models (FEMs) in the individuation of volcanic deformations.

This book describes origin and characteristics of the Earth’s thermal field, thermal flow propagation and some thermal phenomena in the Earth. Description of thermal properties of rocks and methods of thermal field measurements in boreholes, underground, at near-surface conditions enables to understand the principles of temperature field acquisition and geothermal model development. Processing and interpretation of geothermal data are shown on numerous field examples from different regions of the world. The book warps, for instance, such fields as analysis of thermal regime of the Earth’s crust, evolution and thermodynamic conditions of the magma-ocean and early Earth atmosphere, thermal properties of permafrost, thermal waters, geysers and mud volcanoes, methods of Curie discontinuity construction, quantitative interpretation of thermal anomalies, examination of some nonlinear effects, and integration of geothermal data with other geophysical methods. This book is intended for students and researchers in the field of Earth Sciences and Environment studying thermal processes in the Earth and in the subsurface. It will be useful for specialists applying thermal field analysis in petroleum, water and ore geophysics, environmental and ecological studies, archaeological prospection and climate of the past.

The Third Domain is the untold story of how the discovery of a new form of life-first ridiculed, then ignored for the past thirty years by mainstream scientists-is revolutionizing science, industry, and even our search for extraterrestrial life. Classification is a serious issue for science: if you don't know what you're looking at, how can you interpret what you see? Starting with Carolus Linnaeus in the 17th century, scientists have long struggled to order and categorize the many forms of life on Earth. But by the early 20th century the tree of life seemed to have stabilized, with two main domains of life at its roots: single-celled and multi-celled organisms. All creatures fit into one of these two groups. Or so we thought. But in 1977, a lone scientist named Carl Woese determined that archaea-biochemically and genetically unique organisms that live and thrive in some of the most inhospitable environments on Earth-were a distinct form of life, unlike anything seen on Earth before. This shocking discovery was entirely incompatible with the long-standing classification of life as we know it. But as it turned out, archaea were not life as we know it, and the tree of life had to be uprooted once again. Now, archaea are being hailed as one of the most important scientific revelations of the 20th century. The Third Domain tells the story of their strange potential and investigates their incredible history to provide a riveting account of an astonishing discovery.

If theoretical physicists can seriously entertain canonical “standard models” even for the big-bang generation of the entire universe, why cannot life scientists reach a consensus on how life has emerged and settled on this planet? Scientists are hindered by conceptual gaps between bottom-up inferences (from early Earth geological conditions) and top-down extrapolations (from modern life forms to common ancestral states). This book challenges several widely held assumptions and argues for alternative approaches instead. Primal syntheses (literally or figuratively speaking) are called for in at least five major areas. (1) The first RNA-like molecules may have been selected by solar light as being exceptionally photostable. (2) Photosynthetically active minerals and reduced phosphorus compounds could have efficiently coupled the persistent natural energy flows to the primordial metabolism. (3) Stochastic, uncoded peptides may have kick-started an ever-tightening co-evolution of proteins and nucleic acids. (4) The living fossils from the primeval RNA World thrive within modern cells. (5) From the inherently complex protocellular associations preceding the consolidation of integral genomes, eukaryotic cell organization may have evolved more naturally than simple prokaryote-like life forms. – If this book can motivate dedicated researchers to further explore the alternative mechanisms presented, it will have served its purpose well.

During the past ten years, evidence has developed to indicate that seawater convects through oceanic crust driven by heat derived from creation of lithosphere at the Earth-encircling oceanic ridge-rift system of seafloor spreading centers. This has stimulated multiple lines of research with profound implications for the earth and life sciences. The lines of research comprise the role of hydrothermal convection at seafloor spreading centers in the Earth's thermal regime by cooling of newly formed litho sphere (oceanic crust and upper mantle); in global geochemical cycles and mass balances of certain elements by chemical exchange between circulating seawater and basaltic rocks of oceanic crust; in the concentration of metallic mineral deposits by ore-forming processes; and in adaptation of biological communities based on a previously unrecognized form of chemosynthesis. The first work shop devoted to interdisciplinary consideration of this field was organized by a committee consisting of the co-editors of this volume under the auspices of a NATO Advanced Research Institute (ARI) held 5-8 April 1982 at the Department of Earth Sciences of Cambridge University in England. This volume is a product of that workshop. The papers were written by members of a pioneering research community of marine geologists, geophysicists, geochemists and biologists whose work is at the stage of initial description and interpretation of hydrothermal and associated phenomena at seafloor spreading centers.