He places us on the outcrops, rock hammer in hand, to examine the evidence for how these rough-hewn lands came to be. We see California and its gold assembled from pieces of old ocean floor and the relentless movements of the Earth’s tectonic plates. We witness the birth of the Rockies. And we investigate the violent earthquakes that continue to shape the region today. Into the West’s geologic story, Meldahl also weaves its human history. As we follow the adventures of John C. Frémont, Mark Twain, the Donner party, and other historic characters, we learn how geologic forces have shaped human experience in the past and how they direct the fate of the West today.

    The Cascadia Subduction Zone has generated massive earthquakes over and over again throughout geologic time; at least 36 major events in the last 10,000 years. This fault generates a monster earthquake about every 500 years. And the monster is due to return at any time. It could happen 200 years from now, or it could be tonight.The Cascadia Subduction Zone is virtually identical to the offshore fault that wrecked Sumatra in 2004. It will generate the same earthquake we saw in Sumatra, at magnitude 9 or higher, sending crippling shockwaves across a far wider area than any California quake. Slamming into Sacramento, Portland, Seattle, Victoria, and Vancouver, it will send tidal waves to the shores of Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, damaging the economies of the Pacific Rim countries and their trading partners for years to come.In light of recent massive quakes in Haiti, Chile, and Mexico, Cascadia's Fault not only tells the story of this potentially devastating earthquake and the tsunamis it will spawn, it also warns us about the impending crisis almost unprecedented in modern history.

    Targeted to rock-crazy kids, this bold book is more energetic, more visually exciting, and more fun than anything else on the market—and with more information, too! Youngsters become geology experts as they browse eye-popping photos and absorb layers of information made extra fun through a humor-infused presentation.National Geographic supports K-12 educators with ELA Common Core Resources.Visit www.natgeoed.org/commoncore for more information.

    Violent Earth illuminates those dusky subjects with the expertise of The Smithsonian and the graphic skills of DK editors. This fully illustrated, 360-page coffee table book takes you deep into processes that are literally reshaping our planet. As relevant as today's headlines.

    It includes detailed information on how to locate, excavate, and identify rocks from space, and is filled with insider information from an internationally recognized meteorite specialist. Meteorite Hunting is packed with scores of never-before-seen photos, including behind-the-scenes pictures from Season One and Season Two of Meteorite Men. In 16 chapters, Meteorite Hunting compares and explains different hunting strategies, examines strewnfields and craters, and discusses the best field equipment. It also clarifies the importance of research, advises prospective hunters how to go about gaining permission to hunt on private land, describes how meteorites are named and classified, and includes a fully illustrated visual guide to meteorite identification in the lab and in the field.

    The area covered in detail stretches from the Book Cliffs to the deep canyons of the San Juan River area. The events that shaped this vast region are clearly described and include the most recent interpretations of ongoing geologic forces. The book also includes mile-by-mile road logs with explanations of the various features for most of the scenic roads in the region, including Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, and the Natural Bridges area.

    If you're a casual rock collector, you will find Agates of Lake Superior fun, interesting and beautiful. If you're a more advanced hobbyist, you will appreciate this professional and scientific resource. The book provides a thorough examination of Lake Superior's strange and unique agate varieties, as well as a critical look at agate formation theories, tips on how to find and identify agates, where to look for them and how collectible your agates may be.

    In Geology Underfoot in Yellowstone Country, author and geologist Marc Hendrix takes you to over twenty sites in the park and surrounding region that illustrate the deep-time story of Yellowstone Country, from its early existence as a seafloor hundreds of millions of years ago to an earthquake swarm in 2008 that caused some folks to wonder if the Yellowstone Volcano was going to blow its top�again. Besides covering icons such as Old Faithful and Mammoth Hot Springs, Geology Underfoot in Yellowstone Country visits sites that are less well known but just as mind blowing, including outcrops of rock deposited by superfast incendiary flows of hot ash; the glacially sculpted grandeur of the Beartooth and Absaroka mountains witnessed along the Beartooth Highway; and the deadly Madison landslide that killed twenty-eight people in 1959. With prose tooled for the lay reader and a multitude of colorful photos and illustrations, Geology Underfoot in Yellowstone Country will help you read the landscape the way a geologist does.The Geology Underfoot series encourages you to get out of your car for an up-close look at rocks and landforms. These books inform and enlighten, no matter how much�or how little�geology you already know. What�s more, they�re simply good reading, on-site or at home.

    This is the first book to systematically cover basic concepts and applications in both paleobiology and sedimentology, bridging the gap between the two main facets of the field. It emphasizes the importance of understanding ecologic controls on benthic fauna distribution and the role of burrowing organisms in changing their environments. A detailed analysis of the ichnology of a range of depositional environments is presented using examples from the Precambrian to the recent, and the use of trace fossils in facies analysis and sequence stratigraphy is discussed. The potential for biogenic structures to provide valuable information and solve problems in a wide range of fields is also highlighted. An invaluable resource for researchers and graduate students in paleontology, sedimentology and sequence stratigraphy, this book will also be of interest to industry professionals working in petroleum geoscience.

    Over the next three months, amid tense scenes of corporate and political finger-pointing, millions of barrels of crude oil dispersed across the Gulf of Mexico in what became one of the worst oil spills in history.But there is more to BP's story than this. Tom Bergin, an oil broker turned Reuters reporter, watched the 'two-pipeline company' of the early 1980s grow into a dynamic oil giant and PR machine by the turn of the twenty-first century. His unique access to key figures before, during and after the spill - including former CEO Tony Hayward - has enabled him to piece together this compelling account of a corporation in crisis, and to examine how crucial decisions made during BP's remarkable turnaround paved the way for its darkest hour.

    Kappele provides detailed directions to each site, concise information about the materials and gem stones you might find there, what tools to bring, the best season to visit, what kind of vehicle you will need to get there, and a wealth of other information to tantalize beginners as well as the most ardent rockhounds. After more than thirty years of scouring the American West for lapidary fodder, Kappele says many of the sites in this book are by far some of the best he’s yet encountered. May your journey be fruitful and your collecting bag be heavy on the way home.

    Once they have formed, these rare giants can be destroyed by the very forces that created them. Few survive, and even fewer are discovered and collected undamaged. This book is a comprehensive illustrated guide to 260 outstanding examples of gems and minerals from the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum.When Theophrastus described 16 minerals in his textbook De lapidibus, around 300 BCE, he laid the foundation for the science of mineralogy. Advances in the 20th century, particularly the use of X-ray crystallography, now allow the crystal structure of most minerals to be described at the atomic level. The informative introduction of Gems and Minerals explains some of this science, providing definitions of many of the book's technical terms. The book then describes each mineral, accompanied by a photograph. The mineral's chemical and physical properties are identified, as well as how it was formed and where it can be found. Gems and Minerals contains more than 400 photographs and focuses on the beauty of the mineral kingdom. It contains many images of spectacular crystals and gems as well as magnificent manufactured objects made from gold, silver and gemstones. Historical background, the origin of the mineral's name and interesting lesser-known facts complete this guide to a fascinating aspect of the natural world around us.

    In this book, Edmund Stump is the first to show us this continental-scale mountain system in all its stunning beauty and desolation, and the first to provide a comprehensive, fully illustrated history of the region's discovery and exploration.The author not only has conducted extensive research in the Transantarctic Mountains during his forty-year career as a geologist but has also systematically photographed the entire region. Selecting the best of the best of his more than 8,000 photographs, he presents nothing less than the first atlas of these mountains. In addition, he examines the original firsthand accounts of the heroic Antarctic explorations of James Clark Ross (who discovered the mountain range in the early 1840s), Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen, Richard Byrd, and scientists participating in the International Geophysical Year (1957–1958). From these records, Stump is now able to trace the actual routes of the early explorers with unprecedented accuracy. With maps old and new, stunning photographs never before published, and tales of intrepid explorers, this book takes the armchair traveler on an expedition to the Antarctic wilderness that few have ever seen.

    He shows how a forensic approach to volcanology reveals the richness and complexity behind cause and effect, and argues that important lessons for future catastrophe risk management can be drawn from understanding events that took place even at the dawn of human origins.

    Rocks and Minerals features stickers and facts about these gems of the natural world, from precious metals and seashore pebbles to volcanic rocks.

    The Lamarckian approach emphasizes the generation of developmental variations; Darwinism stresses selection. Lamarck's ideas were eventually eclipsed by Darwinian concepts, especially after the emergence of the Modern Synthesis in the twentieth century. The different approaches -- which can be seen as complementary rather than mutually exclusive -- have important implications for the kinds of questions biologists ask and for the type of research they conduct. Lamarckism has been evolving -- or, in Lamarckian terminology, transforming -- since "Philosophie zoologique"'s description of biological processes mediated by "subtle fluids." Essays in this book focus on new developments in biology that make Lamarck's ideas relevant not only to modern empirical and theoretical research but also to problems in the philosophy of biology. Contributors discuss the historical transformations of Lamarckism from the 1820s to the 1940s, and the different understandings of Lamarck and Lamarckism; the Modern Synthesis and its emphasis on Mendelian genetics; theoretical and experimental research on such "Lamarckian" topics as plasticity, soft (epigenetic) inheritance, and individuality; and the importance of a developmental approach to evolution in the philosophy of biology. The book shows the advantages of a "Lamarckian" perspective on evolution. Indeed, the development-oriented approach it presents is becoming central to current evolutionary studies -- as can be seen in the burgeoning field of Evo-Devo. "Transformations of Lamarckism" makes a unique contribution to this research.

    "What is Creation theory?" "Can I believe in a word-wide flood?" What about the Dinosaurs?" "Can a Christian be a good scientist?" Understanding Creation will provide answers to these questions and more for those who are interested in reconciling the interface between biblical faith and science.