Geology Research Guide

Solid Earth Geophysics aspires to define and quantify the internal structure and processes of the Earth in terms of the principles of physics and forms the intrinsic framework, which other allied disciplines utilize for more specific investigations. It brings together more than 200 articles covering established and new concepts of Geophysics across the various sub-disciplines such as Gravity, Geodesy, Geomagnetism, Seismology, Seismics, Deep Earth Processes, Plate Tectonics, Thermal Domains, Computational Methods, etc. in a systematic and consistent format and standard.

This book explores the exciting and complex relationship between Earth's geological history and the biodiversity of life. It provides in-depth coverage of: Earth's formation and subsequent geological history, including patterns of climate change and atmospheric evolution; the early stages of life, from microbial 'primordial soup' theories to the fossil record's most valuable contributions; mechanisms of mutual influence between living organisms and the environment: how life changed Earth's history whilst, at the same time, environmental pressures continue to shape the evolution of species; basic ideas in biodiversity studies: species concepts, measurement techniques, and global distribution patterns; biological systematics, from their historical origins in Greek philosophy and Biblical stories to Darwinian evolution by natural selection, and to phylogenetics based on cutting-edge molecular techniques.

This Encyclopedia of GIS includes provides up-to-date information on emerging topics such as spatial big data, smart-phone GIS, urban computing and mobile recommender systems. It also includes GIS-related commercial and societal applications such as geo-targeting, geo-fencing and understanding climate changes, while enabling more comprehensive coverage of classical GIS topics such as map projections, global positioning systems and spatial cognition. The entries explain the key software, data sets and processes used by geographers and computational scientists.

This encyclopedia provides a snapshot of our current geological knowledge on solid-surface Solar System bodies. Each entry contains information about the features' morphology, its interpretation, proposed formation models, distribution and occurrence, planetary or terrestrial analogs, and research history. More than 600 named planetary feature types are discussed in the encyclopedia, covering a wide range of scales--from micrometers to global scale--and also include landform types (structural or topographic features), parts of landforms, terrain types or surface textures, surface patterns, and features identified at wavelengths extending from visible to radio waves (e.g., albedo, thermal infrared, and radar features). The book covers features formed by impact, aeolian, magmatic, volcanic, tectonic, fluvial, lacustrine, marine and coastal, mass movement, sedimentary, desiccation, liquefaction, periglacial, glacial, nival, sublimation, collapse, weathering, and selective erosion or other, including complex processes.

This Encyclopedia comprises the current knowledge in marine geosciences. Globally growing demand of energy and mineral resources, reliable future projection of climate processes and the protection of coasts to mitigate the threats of disasters and hazards require a comprehensive understanding of the structure, ongoing processes and genesis of the marine geosphere. Beyond the "classical" research fields in marine geology in current time more general concepts have been evolved integrating marine geophysics, hydrography, marine biology, climatology and ecology.

Geoarchaeology is the archaeological subfield that focuses on archaeological information retrieval and problem solving utilizing the methods of geological investigation. This encyclopedia defines terms, introduces problems, describes techniques, and discusses theory and strategy, all in a format designed to make specialized details accessible to the public as well as practitioners. It covers subjects in environmental archaeology, dating, materials analysis, and paleoecology, all of which represent different sources of specialist knowledge that must be shared in order to reconstruct, analyze, and explain the record of the human past. It will not specifically cover sites, civilizations, and ancient cultures, etc., that are better described in other encyclopedias of world archaeology.