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Books in Earth and planetary sciences

Elsevier's Earth and Planetary Sciences collection brings together pioneering research on the complexities of our planet and beyond. Covering topics from Earth's structural dynamics and ecosystems to planetary exploration, these titles support advancements in geoscience, environmental science, and space studies, offering essential insights for researchers, professionals, and students.

    • Emulsions and Oil Treating Equipment

      • 1st Edition
      • December 9, 2008
      • Maurice Stewart + 1 more
      • English
      • Hardback
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      • Paperback
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      • eBook
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      The problem of removing water which is emulsified with produced oil has grown more widespread and often times more difficult as producers attempt to access more difficult reserves. This practical guide is designed to help engineers and operators develop a "feel" for selection, sizing, and troubleshooting emulsion equipment. These skills are of vital importance to ensure low operating costs and to meet crude export quality specifications. The book is written for engineers and operators, who need advanced knowledge of the numerous techniques and the equipment used to destabilize and resolve petroleum emulsions problems. In Emulsions and Oil Treating Equipment: Selection, Sizing and Troubleshooting the author provides engineers and operators with a guide to understanding emulsion theory, methods and equipment, and practical design of a treating system. Comprehensive in its scope, the author explains methods such as: demulsifiers, temperature, electrostatics and non-traditional methods of modulated or pulsed voltage control, as well as equipment such as: electrostatic treater (dehydrator), separator, gunbarr heater-treater and free water knockout. Written in a "how to" format, it brings together hundreds of methods, handy formulas, diagrams and tables in one convenient book.
    • Air and Gas Drilling Manual

      • 3rd Edition
      • December 8, 2008
      • William C. Lyons
      • English
      • Paperback
        9 7 8 0 1 2 4 0 5 4 6 6 0
      • Hardback
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      • eBook
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      The third edition of Air and Gas Drilling Manual describes the basic simulation models for drilling deep wells with air or gas drilling fluids, gasified two-phase drilling fluids, and stable foam drilling fluids. The models are the basis for the development of a systematic method for planning under balanced deep well drilling operations and for monitoring the drilling operation as well as construction project advances. Air and Gas Drilling Manual discusses both oil and natural gas industry applications, and geotechnical (water well, environmental, mining) industry applications. Important well construction and completion issues are discussed for all applications. The engineering analyses techniques are used to develop pre-operations planning methods, troubleshooting operations monitoring techniques and overall operations risk analysis. The essential objective of the book is drilling and well construction cost management control. The book is in both SI and British Imperial units.
    • The Fly River, Papua New Guinea

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 9
      • December 5, 2008
      • Barrie R. Bolton
      • English
      • Hardback
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      In 1984 the OK Tedi Mining Company Limited began mining copper and gold mineralization from Mt. Fubilan, which is located at the headwaters of the OK Tedi. Subsequent mining in the region followed in 1990. Since this time there has been intense monitoring of the environment undertaken by those in the field in order to better understand the possible impact of mining. This book assembles and summarizes research spanning two decades undertaken by leading experts with firsthand experience. Much of this research is contained in internal company reports, giving the reader rare insight and firsthand knowledge.
    • Computational Methods for the Atmosphere and the Oceans

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 14
      • November 28, 2008
      • Roger Temam + 1 more
      • English
      • Hardback
        9 7 8 0 4 4 4 5 1 8 9 3 4
      • eBook
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      This book provides a survey of the frontiers of research in the numerical modeling and mathematical analysis used in the study of the atmosphere and oceans. The details of the current practices in global atmospheric and ocean models, the assimilation of observational data into such models and the numerical techniques used in theoretical analysis of the atmosphere and ocean are among the topics covered.
    • Geochemical Anomaly and Mineral Prospectivity Mapping in GIS

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 11
      • November 26, 2008
      • E.J.M. Carranza
      • English
      • Paperback
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      Geochemical Anomaly and Mineral Prospectivity Mapping in GIS documents and explains, in three parts, geochemical anomaly and mineral prospectivity mapping by using a geographic information system (GIS). Part I reviews and couples the concepts of (a) mapping geochemical anomalies and mineral prospectivity and (b) spatial data models, management and operations in a GIS. Part II demonstrates GIS-aided and GIS-based techniques for analysis of robust thresholds in mapping of geochemical anomalies. Part III explains GIS-aided and GIS-based techniques for spatial data analysis and geo-information sybthesis for conceptual and predictive modeling of mineral prospectivity. Because methods of geochemical anomaly mapping and mineral potential mapping are highly specialized yet diverse, the book explains only methods in which GIS plays an important role. The book avoids using language and functional organization of particular commercial GIS software, but explains, where necessary, GIS functionality and spatial data structures appropriate to problems in geochemical anomaly mapping and mineral potential mapping. Because GIS-based methods of spatial data analysis and spatial data integration are quantitative, which can be complicated to non-numerate readers, the book simplifies explanations of mathematical concepts and their applications so that the methods demonstrated would be useful to professional geoscientists, to mineral explorationists and to research students in fields that involve analysis and integration of maps or spatial datasets. The book provides adequate illustrations for more thorough explanation of the various concepts.
    • Contourites

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 60
      • November 25, 2008
      • M. Rebesco + 1 more
      • English
      • Hardback
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      Contourites are sediments deposited or substantially reworked by bottom currents. The study of contourites is crucial for several fields of fundamental and applied research: paleoclimatology and paleo-oceanography, since these fairly continuous and relatively high-resolution sediments hold the key for priceless information on the variability in circulation patter, current velocity, oceanographic history and basin interconnectivity; hydrocarbon exploration, since accumulation of source rocks may be favored by weak bottom currents, whereas "clean" deep-sea sands may be formed by robust flows; and slope stability, since low-permeability fine-grained contourites facilitate the formation of overpressurized gliding planes when fresh contourites with a high pore-water content becomes rapidly loaded, or when their rigid biosiliceous microfabric collapses due to diagenetic conditions. Despite its significance, this group of sediments is poorly known by the majority of non-specialists. Notwithstanding the growing interest and the intensified research in contourites, a textbook that might also serve as a reference book on contourites was missing until now. This book addresses all aspects of the knowledge in the field of contourites and provides an authoritative and comprehensive coverage of the subject. It also can serve as a standard reference work for non-specialists, and in particular postgraduate students, university teachers and lecturers, researchers and professionals who are seeking an authoritative source of information about contourites.
    • Shore Processes and their Palaeoenvironmental Applications

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 4
      • November 21, 2008
      • Edward J. Anthony
      • English
      • eBook
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      The last five years have been marked by rapid technological and analytical developments in the study of shore processes and in the comprehension of shore deposits and forms, and shoreline change over time. These developments have generated a considerable body of literature in a wide range of professional journals, thus illustrating the cross-disciplinary nature of shore processes and the palaeo-environmental dimension of shore change. The justification of the book lies in bringing together these developments using an objective approach that synthesises current advances, technical progress in the analysis of shores and shore processes, contradictory interpretations, and potential advances using future-generation developments in techniques. The book provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art presentation of shore processes and deposits across ranges of wave energy and tide-range environments, sediment supply and textural conditions, sea-level change, exceptional events and longer-term climate change, based on the most recently published literature in the marine sciences. The book insists on the nested time and spatial scales through which are inter-linked shore processes and deposits, thus providing a better understanding of the way shores change over time. The approach is thus cross-disciplinary, and gap-bridging between processes and deposits, between analytical techniques, and between timescales. The audience is from graduate level upwards, and the book is intended as a comprehensive reference source for professionals in a wide range of coastal science fields (geologists, sedimentologists, geomorphologists, oceanographers, engineers, managers, archaeologists…).
    • Principles of the Magnetic Methods in Geophysics

      • 1st Edition
      • November 21, 2008
      • English
      • eBook
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      Magnetic methods are widely used in exploration, engineering, borehole and global geophysics, and the subjects of this book are the physical and mathematical principles of these methods regardless of the area of application. Beginning with Ampere's law, the force of interaction between currents is analyzed, and then the concept of the magnetic field is introduced and the fundamental features are discussed.Special attention is paid to measurements of relaxation processes, including topics as the spin echoes or refocusing. Also the special role of the magnetic method in the development of the plate tectonic theory is described.
    • Advances in Geophysics

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 50
      • November 11, 2008
      • Haruo Sato + 1 more
      • English
      • Hardback
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      • eBook
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      Seismic waves generated by earthquakes have been interpreted to provide us information about the Earth’s structure across a variety of scales. For short periods of less than 1 second, the envelope of seismograms changes significantly with increased travel distance and coda waves are excited by scattering due to randomly distributed heterogeneities in the Earth. Deterministic structures such as horizontally uniform velocity layer models in traditional seismology cannot explain these phenomena. This book focuses on the Earth heterogeneity and scattering effects on seismic waves. Topics covered are recent developments in wave theory and observation including: coda wave analysis for mapping medium heterogeneity and monitoring temporal variation of physical properties, radiation of short-period seismic waves from an earthquake fault, weak localization of seismic waves, attenuation of seismic waves in randomly porous media, synthesis of seismic wave envelopes in short periods, and laboratory investigations of ultrasonic wave propagation in rock samples.
    • The Sedimentary Basins of the United States and Canada

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 5
      • November 11, 2008
      • Andrew Miall
      • English
      • eBook
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      In recent years there have been rapid strides in our understanding of plate-tectonic processes, many developments in methods of basin analysis, and the accumulation of much new surface and subsurface geological and geophysical data. Projects such as COCORP (in the United States) and Lithoprobe (in Canada) have provided essential insights into the deep crustal structure of the continent. Synthesis of all the available information about North America’s geological regions has not been attempted systematically since the “Decade of North American Geology” project undertaken by the Geological Society of America and the Geological Survey of Canada nearly twenty years ago. The book commences with a summary of the Phanerozoic geological history of the United States and Canada, illustrated with a suite of new paleogeographic maps, and tying in each of the subsequent regional chapters by the inclusion of numerous cross-references. This followed by a set of fifteen regional syntheses of the principal tectonic regions of the United States and Canada, focusing on the stratigraphic and tectonic history of the major sedimentary basins. Most of these chapters have been contributed by specialists, drawing on their own research, and providing interpretive summaries of a type not previously attempted.