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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.

  • Advances in Geophysics

    Earth Heterogeneity and Scattering Effects on Seismic Waves
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 50
    • Haruo Sato + 1 more
    • English
    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.
  • Handbook of Stable Isotope Analytical Techniques Vol II

    • 1st Edition
    • Pier A. de Groot
    • English
    This two-volume reference serves as a handbook containing a wealth of information for all isotope chemists working in a wide range of disciplines including anthropology to ecology; drug detection methodology to toxicology; nutrition to food science; and the atmospheric sciences to geochemistry.Complem... the first volume, Volume II includes matters that are not strictly confined to the analytical techniques themselves, but relate to analysis of stable isotopes, such as the views on the development of mass spectrometers, isotopic scales, standards and references, and directives for setting up a laboratory.ALSO AVAILABLE:Volume I: Dec. 2004, 0444511148/978044451... $176.00Volume I and II (set): Oct. 2007, 0444511164/978044451... $205.00
  • Antarctic Climate Evolution

    • 1st Edition
    • Fabio Florindo + 1 more
    • English
    Antarctic Climate Evolution is the first book dedicated to furthering knowledge on the evolution of the world’s largest ice sheet over its ~34 million year history. This volume provides the latest information on subjects ranging from terrestrial and marine geology to sedimentology and glacier geophysics.
  • Wildland Fires and Air Pollution

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 8
    • Andrzej Bytnerowicz + 3 more
    • English
    The interaction between smoke and air pollution creates a public health challenge. Fuels treatments proposed for National Forests are intended to reduce fuel accumulations and wildfire frequency and severity, as well as to protect property located in the wild land-urban interface. However, prescribed fires produce gases and aerosols that have instantaneous and long-term effects on air quality. If fuels treatment are not conducted, however, then wild land fires become more severe and frequent causing worse public health and wellfare effects. A better understanding of air pollution and smoke interactions is needed in order to protect the public health and allow for socially and ecologically acceptable use of fire as a management tool. Wildland Fires and Air Pollution offers such an understanding and examines innovative wide-scale monitoring efforts (field and remotely sensed), and development of models predicting spatial and temporal distribution of air pollution and smoke resulting from forests fires and other sources.
  • The Ore Minerals Under the Microscope

    An Optical Guide
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 3
    • Bernhard Pracejus
    • English
    This is a very detailed colour atlas for ore/opaque minerals (ore microscopy) with the main emphasis on name and synonyms, mineral group, chemical composition, information about major formation environment, optical data, reflection colour/shade comparison with 4 common/standard minerals of a similar colour or grey shade, up to 5 high-quality photos for each mineral with scale, and a short description of the pictures. A compilation from some of the prominent publications in the field of ore microscopy yielded a list of 431 minerals are included in this atlas.
  • Geomorphometry

    Concepts, Software, Applications
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 33
    • Tomislav Hengl + 1 more
    • English
    Geomorphometry is the science of quantitative land-surface analysis. It draws upon mathematical, statistical, and image-processing techniques to quantify the shape of earth's topography at various spatial scales. The focus of geomorphometry is the calculation of surface-form measures (land-surface parameters) and features (objects), which may be used to improve the mapping and modelling of landforms to assist in the evaluation of soils, vegetation, land use, natural hazards, and other information. This book provides a practical guide to preparing Digital Elevation Models (DEM) for analysis and extracting land-surface parameters and objects from DEMs through a variety of software. It further offers detailed instructions on applying parameters and objects in soil, agricultural, environmental and earth sciences. This is a manual of state-of-the-art methods to serve the various researchers who use geomorphometry.Soil scientists will use this book to further learn the methods for classifying and measuring the chemical, biological, and fertility properties of soils and gain a further understaing of the role of soil as a natural resource. Geologists will find value in the instruction this book provides for measuring the physical features of the soil such as elevation, porosity, and structure which geologists use to predict natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and flooding.
  • Global Sedimentology of the Ocean

    An Interplay between Geodynamics and Paleoenvironment
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 3
    • Christian M. Robert
    • English
    A great deal of information has been gained during the past 20 years about the deep ocean. This book synthesizes new information in marine sedimentology, applying concepts to case studies, and integrating the information in a context of plate tectonics, global circulation, and sedimentary processes. The potential of sediment series as archives of past environments is highlighted.
  • The Properties of Water and their Role in Colloidal and Biological Systems

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 16
    • Carel Jan van Oss
    • English
    This book treats the different current as well as unusual and hitherto often unstudied physico-chemical and surface-thermodynami... properties of water that govern all polar interactions occurring in it. These properties include the hyper-hydrophobicity of the water-air interface, the cluster formation of water molecules in the liquid state and the concomitant variability of the ratio of the electron-accepticity to electron-donicity of liquid water as a function of temperature, T. The increase of that ratio with T is the cause of the increase in hydration repulsion (“hydration pressure”) between polar surfaces upon heating, when they are immersed in water. The book also treats the surface properties of apolar and polar molecules, polymers, particles and cells, as well as their mutual interaction energies, when immersed in water, under the influence of the three prevailing non-covalent forces, i.e., Lewis acid-base (AB), Lifshitz-van der Waals (LW) and electrical double layer (EL) interactions. The polar AB interactions, be they attractive or repulsive, typically represent up to 90% of the total interaction energies occurring in water. Thus the addition of AB energies to the LW + EL energies of the classical DLVO theory of energy vs. distance analysis makes this powerful tool (the Extended DLVO theory) applicable to the quantitative study of the stability of particle suspensions in water. The influence of AB forces on the interfacial tension between water and other condensed-phase materials is stressed and serves, inter alia, to explain, measure and calculate the driving force of the hydrophobic attraction between such materials (the “hydrophobic effect”), when immersed in water. These phenomena, which are typical for liquid water, influence all polar interactions that take place in it. All of these are treated from the viewpoint of the properties of liquid water itself, including the properties of advancing freezing fronts and the surface properties of ice at 0o C.
  • Evolution and Geological Significance of Larger Benthic Foraminifera

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 21
    • Marcelle K. BouDagher-Fadel
    • English
    The over-all aim of the book is to collect and add to the information published already on the larger benthic foraminifera and in cases their associated algae. Many decades of research in the Far East, to some extent in the Middle East and Americas has lead to numerous articles with confused systematics. Therefore, with the aid of new and precise age dates, from calcareous nannofossils and Sr isotopes, the current schemes of the larger foraminifera in a relatively precise chronostratigraphic and sequence stratigraphic framework are revised. This is achieved by: 1) establishing the systematic and occurrences of larger foraminifera from carbonate rocks in successions covering the Carboniferous to Miocene, with careful taxonomic comparison with the known records in the different bioprovinces; 2) illustration fossils of different families and groups at generic levels. 3) illustrations of important species and comparing distributions of different taxa.The inventory of larger benthic foraminifera focuses on the main important groups and the illustration of their genera. Reviews of the global state of the art of each group are complemented with the new data, and the direct palaeobiogeographic relevance of the new data is analyzed.
  • Radar Imaging of the Ocean Waves

    • 1st Edition
    • Mikhail B. Kanevsky
    • English
    This book is dedicated to studying the ocean with radar tools, in particular, with space radars. Being intended mainly for the scientists preoccupied with the problem (as well as senior course students), it concentrates and generalizes the knowledge scattered over specialized journals. The significant part of the book contains the results obtained by the author.