3 new biota and extinction of others, and extensive soil erosion reaching almost catastrophic proportions have led to desertification of many upland areas and abandonment by local populations. The role of climatic change as opposed to deforestation and sheep grazing in creating these new environments has proved a further issue of great controversy. While our understanding of historic environmental changes remains inadequate, our knowledge of processes that are modifying the present-day landscape is also sparse and selective. Little is known of active periglacial processes, slope instabilities, and rates of soil erosion by slope wash and aeolian transport. Coastal processes of erosion and beach formation have been studied only locally. Most of our information on recent or active processes comprises records of glacier fluctuations, volcanic eruptions and jOkulhlaup events, but sti11little is known of the mechanisms and processes of landscape change effected by these events. This volume of papers, based on a conference sponsored by the Quaternary Research Association and the Geologists Association and held at the University of Aberdeen in April 1989, addresses many of these crucial uncertainties regarding environmental changes in Iceland from the Lateglacial onwards. The papers make a major contribution to dispelling many earlier uncertainties and clarifying areas of controversy. Many of the papers challenge traditional and poorly supported ideas, replacing them with hypotheses based on new data and new insights derived from the expansion of wider scientific expertise and theory. The volume focuses on three major areas of research in particular.

This handbook is vital for understanding the origin of deep-water sandstones, emphasizing sandy-mass transport deposits (SMTDs) and bottom-current reworked sands (BCRSs) in petroleum reservoirs. This cutting-edge perspective, a pragmatic alternative to the conventional turbidite concepts, is crucial because the turbidite paradigm is built on a dubious foundation without empirical data on sandy turbidity currents in modern oceans. In the absence of evidence for sandy turbidity currents in natural environments, elegant theoretical models and experimental observations of turbidity currents are irrelevant substitutes for explaining the origin of sandy deposits as "turbidites." In documenting modern and ancient SMTDs (sandy slides, sandy slumps, and sandy debrites) and BCRSs (deposits of thermohaline [contour] currents, wind-driven currents, and tidal currents), the author describes and interprets core and outcrop (1:20 to 1:50 scale) from 35 case studies worldwide (which include 32 petroleum reservoirs), totaling more than 10,000 m in cumulative thickness, carried out during the past 36 years (1974-2010). The book dispels myths about the importance of sea level lowstand and provides much-needed clarity on the triggering of sediment failures by earthquakes, meteorite impacts, tsunamis, and cyclones with implications for the distribution of deep-water sandstone petroleum reservoirs. - Promotes pragmatic interpretation of deep-water sands using alternative possibilities - Validates the economic importance of SMTDs and BCRS in deep-water exploration and production - Rich in empirical data and timely new perspectives

Deep-water (below wave base) processes, although generally hidden from view, shape the sedimentary record of more than 65% of the Earth’s surface, including large parts of ancient mountain belts. This book aims to inform advanced-level undergraduate and postgraduate students, and professional Earth scientists with interests in physical oceanography and hydrocarbon exploration and production, about many of the important physical aspects of deep-water (mainly deep-marine) systems. The authors consider transport and deposition in the deep sea, trace-fossil assemblages, and facies stacking patterns as an archive of the underlying controls on deposit architecture (e.g., seismicity, climate change, autocyclicity). Topics include modern and ancient deep-water sedimentary environments, tectonic settings, and how basinal and extra-basinal processes generate the typical characteristics of basin slopes, submarine canyons, contourite mounds and drifts, submarine fans, basin floors and abyssal plains.

This book offers extensive information on the course of sedimentation in the Proterozoic Vindhyan Basin and the potential record of ancient life stored within the rocks. It covers topics ranging from facies analysis to sequence-building, from carbonates to siliciclastics, and mixed lithology and life records from microbial to potentially eukaryotes, along with the basin evolutionary history. Further, the book includes 75 color photographs and accompanying hand-sketches to help readers grasp key aspects of Vindhyan Geology. Vindhyan rocks are well known for their excellent preservation of microbial record of earth. Offering a student-friendly field guide containing detailed route maps, geological maps and a wealth of visual examples, it is also extremely useful in terms of understanding the microbe-dominated environments on Mars.

Historically, submarine-mass failures or mass-transport deposits have been a focus of increasingly intense investigation by academic institutions particularly during the last decade, though they received much less attention by geoscientists in the energy industry. With recent interest in expanding petroleum exploration and production into deeper water-depths globally and more widespread availability of high-quality data sets, mass-transport deposits are now recognized as a major component of most deep-water settings. This recognition has lead to the realization that many aspects of these deposits are still unknown or poorly understood. This volume contains twenty-three papers that address a number of topics critical to further understanding mass-transport deposits. These topics include general overviews of these deposits, depositional settings on the seafloor and in the near-subsurface interval, geohazard concerns, descriptive outcrops, integrated outcrop and seismic data/seismic forward modeling, petroleum reservoirs, and case studies on several associated topics. This volume will appeal to a broad cross section of geoscientists and geotechnical engineers, who are interested in this rapidly expanding field. The selection of papers in this volume reflects a growing trend towards a more diverse blend of disciplines and topics, covered in the study of mass-transport deposits.

A recent renaissance in the field of "event" stratigraphy has promoted a much more thorough examination of the geologic record of particular fossil-bearing strata. This reference work compiles the findings of leading researchers on fossil beds, epiboles and global bioevents, mapping out a definitive temporal and regional classification of event horizons. Based primarily on research with Lower and Middle Paleozoic rocks of eastern North America, 'this volume significantly links these events to relatively short-term phenomena, including storms and climate-forcing cycles. An invaluable resource for specialists and students in the fields of paleontology, paleoecology, stratigraphy, and sedimentology, Paleontological Events helps to clarify the biological and taphonomic significance of these horizons.

This volume presents a unique compendium of papers assessing theeffects of volcanism on lakes, as recorded by the volcaniclasticsediments deposited within them. The unifying theme is that theeffects of volcanism on lacustrine sedimentation are diverse anddistinctive, and that volcaniclastic lacustrine sediments hold thekey to understanding a range of processes and events that cannot bereadily addressed by the study of any non-volcanic lakes. Thirteen papers, with authors from nine countries, examine bothmodern and ancient eruption-affected lacustrine deposits. Volcaniceruptions affect lakes and their deposits in many ways, and thesepapers evaluate processes and products of volcanic eruptions withinlakes, of tectonically impounded lakes strongly influenced byvolcanism, of eruption-impounded lakes and of general factorscontrolling sedimentation of vitric ash and pumice.Tephrastratigraphic studies also take advantage of the exceptionalpreservation of thin laminae in quiet lakes to precisely dateepisodes in the evolution of long-lived lakes and their catchmentareas, and to understand how volcanism affects normal lacustrineprocesses. The volume as a whole is an unparalleled source of informationon all aspects of the physical sedimentary results of volcanism inlacustrine settings, and serves as a complement to other studiesconcerned primarily with thermal and geochemical characteristics oflakes within volcanic craters. If you are a member of the International Association ofSedimentologists, for purchasing details, please see:http://www.iasnet.org/publications/details.asp?code=SP30

This completely revised and enlarged second edition provides an up-to-date overview of all major topics in sedimentary geology. It is unique in its quantitative approach to denudation-accumulation systems and basin fillings, including dynamic aspects. The relationship between tectonism and basin evolution as well as the concepts of sequence cycle and event stratigraphy in various depositional environments are extensively discussed. Numerous, often composite figures, a well-structured text, brief summaries in boxes, and several examples from all continents make the book an invaluable source of information for students, researchers and professors in academia as well as for professionals in the oil industry.

This textbook explains sedimentological processes via the fundamental physics that underlies the actual mechanisms involved. Demonstrates the applicability of fundamental principles, such as Newton's Three Laws of Motion, the Law of Conservation of Energy, the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, and of other physical relations in hydraulics and groundwater hydrology by discussions of natural processes which form sediments and sedimentary rocks. In this second edition several chapters have been updated and amended to reflect progress in the field