International Lithosphere Program; Publ. No. 0104

"Don Swanson has adopted a detailed, field-oriented approach to studying problems of great volcanologic importance across a range of compositions and scales. This volume emphasizes the role of field volcanology as a window into better understanding volcanic processes, past and present, and highlights those places and processes where Swanson's insights have been particularly impactful"--

Central-Southern Italy and the Tyrrhenian Sea are the sites of extensive Plio-Quaternary magmatic activity. The rock compositions include crustal anatectic granites and rhyolites, tholeiitic, calc-alkaline, shoshonitic volcanics, and potassic to ultrapotassic and Na-alkaline volcanics. This very wide compositional variation makes Italian magmatism one of the most complex petrological issues, the understanding of which is a challenge for modern petrology and geochemistry. This book summarises the petrological, geochemical and volcanological characteristics of Italian Plio-Quaternary volcanism, and discusses petrogenetic hypotheses and possible geodynamics settings. The book is written for petrologists and geochemists, but fundamental geochemical information is well presented and the use of excessive jargon is avoided, making the book readable to a wide audience of Earth scientists.

This impressive scientific resource presents up-to-date information on ten thousand years of volcanic activity on Earth. In the decade and a half since the previous edition was published new studies have refined assessments of the ages of many volcanoes, and several thousand new eruptions have been documented. This edition updates the book’s key components: a directory of volcanoes active during the Holocene; a chronology of eruptions over the past ten thousand years; a gazetteer of volcano names, synonyms, and subsidiary features; an extensive list of references; and an introduction placing these data in context. This edition also includes new photographs, data on the most common rock types forming each volcano, information on population densities near volcanoes, and other features, making it the most comprehensive source available on Earth’s dynamic volcanism.

This memoir is the first to review all of Antarctica’s volcanism between 200 million years ago and the Present. The region is still volcanically active. The volume is an amalgamation of in-depth syntheses, which are presented within distinctly different tectonic settings. Each is described in terms of (1) the volcanology and eruptive palaeoenvironments; (2) petrology and origin of magma; and (3) active volcanism, including tephrochronology. Important volcanic episodes include: astonishingly voluminous mafic and felsic volcanic deposits associated with the Jurassic break-up of Gondwana; the construction and progressive demise of a major Jurassic to Present continental arc, including back-arc alkaline basalts and volcanism in a young ensialic marginal basin; Miocene to Pleistocene mafic volcanism associated with post-subduction slab-window formation; numerous Neogene alkaline volcanoes, including the massive Erebus volcano and its persistent phonolitic lava lake, that are widely distributed within and adjacent to one of the world’s major zones of lithospheric extension (the West Antarctic Rift System); and very young ultrapotassic volcanism erupted subglacially and forming a world-wide type example (Gaussberg).

Details information about volcanoes found in the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Canada.

Accompanying CD-ROM, entitled Supplementary materials to Stratigraphy and geology of volcanic areas, includes three geologic maps in Adobe Acrobat PDF files.

This monograph reviews the nature of Quaternary environmental changes over the largest continent in the Southern Hemisphere. Moreover, since South America makes a transect across most climatic belts of an entire hemisphere, it provides a unique opportunity to examine the impact of changing Quaternary climates on a variety of environments. It also forms the basis for judging the synchrony or non-synchrony of Quaternary climatic changes between hemispheres and this has important implications for climatic modelling.As South America has a dynamic tectonic regime along its western margin, 3 chapters discuss the geomorphological impact of Quaternary tectonics and volcanism. The following 6 chapters integrate evidence for Quaternary changes in the great alluvial basins of the Continent Orinoco, Amazon, Paranaacute;) and in the contiguous highland massifs (Guyana, Brazil, Patagonia). As parts of the Andes have been high enough to support glaciers since the late Miocene, 5 chapters review the nature and consequences of Quaternary glacier fluctuations. The following 4 chapters select major process-form systems that impacted the continent during the Quaternary, including geocryogenic activity, palaeolake development, palaeo-gravel formations and coastal changes. Three chapters provide the first major review of Quaternary vegetation changes in South America (primarily the Andes) deduced from palaeoecological data. The final chapter weaves most of the environmental threads together in an overall synthesis of the Quaternary of South America.The book is lavishly illustrated with photographs and line diagrams. As it provides a compendium of data and analyses about Quaternary changes for a whole continent, this book should appeal to a wide range of environmental disciplines.

A unique interdisciplinary approach to disaster risk research, including global hazards and case-studies, for researchers, graduate students and professionals.