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Elsevier

Books in Quaternary geology

  • Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science

    • 3rd Edition
    • Scott A. Elias
    • English
    Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science, Third Edition, Six Volume Set brings together the multidisciplinary expertise needed to understand the history of humans, life, environmental, and climate change to understand what we may expect over the coming decades. Since publication of the previous edition, our understanding of many topics has been revolutionized by new discoveries and new techniques. The development of ancient DNA studies, for example, has revolutionized our thinking about the origins, dispersal, and population dynamics of our ancestors. Every new aDNA analysis from ancient human remains causes the story to become more complex.We are the sole survivors of the genus Homo, yet we harbor genetic fragments from other closely related but long-extinct lineages. The Quaternary is uniquely situated as a laboratory in which to study the shaping of the modern world, including biotic responses to large-scale environmental change. This new edition of this book is the most comprehensive account of state-of-the-art research in this field.

  • Quaternary Glaciations - Extent and Chronology

    A Closer Look
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 15
    • J. Ehlers + 2 more
    • English
    The book presents an up-to-date, detailed overview of the Quaternary glaciations all over the world, not only with regard to stratigraphy but also with regard to major glacial landforms and the extent of the respective ice sheets. The locations of key sites are included. The information is presented in digital, uniformly prepared maps which can be used in a Geographical Information System (GIS) such as ArcView or ArcGIS. The accompanying text supplies the information on how the data were obtained (geomorphology, geological mapping, air photograph evaluation, satellite imagery), how the features were dated (14C, TL, relative stratigraphy) and how reliable they are supposed to be. All references to the underlying basic publications are included. Where controversial interpretations are possible e.g. in Siberia or Tibet, this is pointed out. As a result, the information on Quaternary glaciations worldwide will be much improved and supplied in a uniform digital format.The information on the glacial limits is compiled in digital form by the coordinators of the project, and is available for download at: http://booksite.else...

  • The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 14
    • Nick Ashton + 2 more
    • English
    The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain Project (AHOB) funded by the Leverhulme Trust began in 2001 and brought together researchers from a range of disciplines with the aim of investigating the record of human presence in Britain from the earliest occupation until the end of the last Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago. Study of changes in climate, landscape and biota over the last million years provides the environmental backdrop to understanding human presence and absence together with the development of new technologies. This book brings together the multidisciplinary work of the project. The chapters present the results of new fieldwork and research on old sites from museum collections using an array of new analytical techniques.

  • Advances in Quaternary Entomology

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 12
    • Scott A. Elias
    • English
    Advances in Quaternary Entomology addresses the science of fossil insects by demonstrating their immense contribution to our knowledge of the paleoenvironmental and climatological record of the past 2.6 million years. In this comprehensive survey of the field, Scott A. Elias recounts development of scholarship, reviews the fossil insect record from Quaternary deposits throughout the world, and points to rewarding areas for future research. The study of Quaternary entomology is becoming an important tool in understanding past environmental changes. Most insects are quite specific as to habitat requirements, and those in non-island environments have undergone almost no evolutionary change in the Quaternary period. We therefore can use their modern ecological requirements as a basis for interpreting what past environments must have been like.

  • Tropical and sub-tropical West Africa - Marine and continental changes during the Late Quaternary

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 10
    • P. Giresse
    • English
    West Africa and the eastern Atlantic stretching from Mauritania in the north to Namibia in the south offer a large latitudinal stretch incorporating nearly symmetrical climatic gradients from the Equator. On the time scale of Quaternary Glacial and Interglacial cycles, today, we possess well-documented and recently published marine sedimentary records showing changes in oceanic and atmospheric circulations and terrestrial fluxes. Deep-sea sediment records contain a wide range of palaeoenvironmental indicators like oxygen and carbon isotopes, alkenones, foraminiferal and other planktonic assemblages over time periods up to and greater than 125,000 years. These are signals of temperature and circulation shifts and allow Interglacial and Glacial comparisons on a regional and inter-hemispheric scale. However, this effort to synthesize the existing knowledge cannot yet aspire to a global modelling. Linking with terrestrial records, albeit spatially patchy and generally lacking a firm chronology, this book points to shorter time scale chronologies from lakes, marshes and river deposits. Diverse and not very wellknown literature, both French and English, is reported here. Lastly, the book records recent knowledge of the first steps of human occupation of frequently hostile environments and considers the environmental impact of ancient and modern societies.

  • Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science

    • 1st Edition
    • Scott A. Elias
    • English
    The quaternary sciences constitute a dynamic, multidisciplinary field of research that has been growing in scientific and societal importance in recent years. This branch of the Earth sciences links ancient prehistory to modern environments. Quaternary terrestrial sediments contain the fossil remains of existing species of flora and fauna, and their immediate predecessors. Quaternary science plays an integral part in such important issues for modern society as groundwater resources and contamination, sea level change, geologic hazards (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis), and soil erosion. With over 360 articles and 2,600 pages, many in full-color, the Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science provides broad ranging, up-to-date articles on all of the major topics in the field. Written by a team of leading experts and under the guidance of an international editorial board, the articles are at a level that allows undergraduate students to understand the material, while providing active researchers with the latest information in the field. Also available online via ScienceDirect (2006) – featuring extensive browsing, searching, and internal cross-referencing between articles in the work, plus dynamic linking to journal articles and abstract databases, making navigation flexible and easy. For more information, pricing options and availability visit www.info.sciencedire...

  • Iceland - Modern Processes and Past Environments

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 5
    • C. Caseldine + 3 more
    • English
    Iceland provides an unique stage on which to study the natural environment, both past and present, and it is understanding both aspects of reconstructing the past and observing and interpreting the present that form the focus of the contributions to this volume. The papers are all written by active researchers and incorporate both reviews and new data. Although concentrating largely on the recent Quaternary timescale a wide range of topics is explored including subglacial volcanism, onshore and offshore evidence for the Last Glacial Maximum and subsequent deglaciation, current glacial characteristics including jökulhlaups and glacial landsystems, soil development, Holocene ecosystem change, current oceanography, impacts of volcanic sulphur loading, chemical weathering and the CO2 budget and documentary evidence for historical climate. The key element of the volume is that for the first time it provides a wide overview of a range of topics for which Iceland provides an almost unparalleled laboratory emphasizing the importance of research on this small island for studies over a much broader global scale. These reviews point the way to future research directions and are supplemented by extensive illustrations and a comprehensive bibliography.

  • Quaternary Glaciations - Extent and Chronology

    Part I: Europe
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 2
    • J. Ehlers + 1 more
    • English
    This book is the first of three volumes in which the recent knowledge of the extent and chronology of Quaternary glaciations has been compiled on a global scale. This information is seen as a fundamental requirement, not only for the glacial workers, but for the wider user-community of general Quaternary workers. In particular the need for accurate ice-front positions is a basic requirement for the rapidly growing field of palaeoclimate modelling. In order to provide the information for the widest-possible range of users in the most accessible form, a series of digital maps was prepared.The glacial limits were mapped in ArcView, the Geographical Information System (GIS) used by the work group. Digital maps, showing glacial limits, end moraines, ice-dammed lakes, glacier-induced drainage diversions and the locations of key sections through which the glacial limits are defined and dated are included. For major parts of Europe also the extent of the maximum Eemian transgression has been indicated. The digital maps in this volume cover all of Europe and parts of northwestern Siberia. Both overview maps and more detailed maps are provided.

  • The Quaternary Period in the United States

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 1
    • A.R. Gillespie + 2 more
    • English
    This book reviews advances in understanding of the past ca. two million years of Earth history - the Quaternary Period - in the United States. It begins with sections on ice and water - as glaciers, permafrost, oceans, rivers, lakes, and aquifers. Six chapters are devoted to the high-latitude Pleistocene ice sheets, to mountain glaciations of the western United States, and to permafrost studies. Other chapters discuss ice-age lakes, caves, sea-level fluctuations, and riverine landscapes. With a chapter on landscape evolution models, the book turns to essays on geologic processes. Two chapters discuss soils and their responses to climate, and wind-blown sediments. Two more describe volcanoes and earthquakes, and the use of Quaternary geology to understand the hazards they pose. The next part of the book is on plants and animals. Five chapters consider the Quaternary history of vegetation in the United States. Other chapters treat forcing functions and vegetation response at different spatial and temporal scales, the role of fire as a catalyst of vegetation change during rapid climate shifts, and the use of tree rings in inferring age and past hydroclimatic conditions. Three chapters address vertebrate paleontology and the extinctions of large mammals at the end of the last glaciation, beetle assemblages and the inferences they permit about past conditions, and the peopling of North America. A final chapter addresses the numerical modeling of Quaternary climates, and the role paleoclimatic studies and climatic modeling has in predicting future response of the Earth's climate system to the changes we have wrought.

  • Ice Age Southern Andes

    A Chronicle of Palaeoecological Events
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 3
    • C.J. Heusser
    • English
    The Southern Andes, stretching from the subtropics to the subantarctic, are ideally located for palaeoenvironmental research. Over the broad and continuous latitudinal extent of the cordillera (-24˚), vegetation is adjusted to climatic gradients and atmospheric circulation patterns.Opposed to the prevailing Southern Westerlies, the Southern Andes are positioned to receive the brunt of the winds, while biota are set to record the shifting of incoming storm systems over time. Sequential, latitudinally-placed... sedimentary deposits containing microfossils and macroremains, as archives of past vegetation and climate, make possible the detection of equatorward and poleward displacement of plant communities and, as a consequence, changes in climatic controls. No terrestrial setting in the Southern Hemisphere is so unique for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction during and since the last ice age. Twenty radiocarbon-dated fossil pollen and spore records chosen to place emphasis on the last ice age include high-resolution, submillennial data sets that also cover the Holocene, thus providing contrast between present interglacial and past glacial ages. From a refined data base, the records constitute the foundation for interpreting factors responsible for vegetation change over >50,000 14C years, glacial-interglacial migration and refugial patterns for a diversity of taxa, and the extent of intrahemispheric and polar hemispheric synchroneity versus asynchroneity.

  • Quaternary Dating Methods

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 7
    • W.C. Mahaney
    • English

  • Global Palaeoclimate of the Late Cenozoic

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 12
    • V.A. Zubakov + 1 more
    • English
    This is a detailed description of the history and chronology of global climate based on event-signal stratigraphy. The history of global climate is described for the last fifty million years with the description for the last one million years in detail. Climatostratigraphic sequences of twelve key regions are taken as a basis, eight of them situated in the USSR territories. Chronology of climatic events of the Pleistocene, Pliocene and Miocene is developed based on palaeomagnetic and radiometric data. The authors' version of its correlation with oxygene-isotope scales of deep-sea sediments is given. Theoretical problems of climatic stratigraphy and palaeoclimatology are discussed, in particular, the causes of climatic change. The Northern Hemisphere palaeoclimatic reconstructions are made for the Holocene, Eemian and Pliocene temperature optima, considered as possible palaeoanalogues of climate of the 21st Century. The book is intended primarily for a wide circle of scientific workers, palaeoclimatologists and palaeogeographers, but will also interest geologists, biologists, palaeomagnetologists and archaeologists.