Much near-surface geophysics research and development has occurred since the announcements in early 1988 in GEOPHYSICS and THE LEADING EDGE that Stanley H. Ward was assembling a collection of papers for a new book tentatively titled Environmental Geophysics. The resulting 71 published papers filled three hardbound volumes—Review and Tutorial; Environmental and Groundwater; and Geotechnical.

This report highlights activities through 2010 in metals, industrial minerals, geothermal energy, and petroleum. Numerous graphs and charts are incorporated for rapid inspection of trends in production and price. The value of overall mineral and energy production in Nevada increased to an all-time high of $7.72 billion, up substantially from the previous high of $6.26 billion in 2008. Gold production experienced an increase to 5.3 million ounces in 2010, after more or less steadily decreasing from a high of 8.86 million ounces in 1998 to 5.0 million ounces in 2009. 2010 was the 22nd consecutive year with production in excess of 5.0 million ounces. Nevada led the nation in the production of gold, barite, and gypsum, and was the only state that produced magnesite, lithium, and the specialty clays, sepiolite and saponite. Other commodities mined and produced in Nevada in 2010, more or less in order of value, included copper, construction aggregate (sand, gravel, and crushed stone, including limestone and dolomite), silver, geothermal energy, petroleum, lime (produced from limestone and dolomite), cement (produced from limestone, clay, gypsum, and iron ore), silica (industrial sand), diatomite, clays, molybdenum, perlite, iron ore, dimension stone, salt, semiprecious gemstones (turquoise and opal), and mercury (as a byproduct of gold and silver processing). Locations of many of the sites mentioned in the text of this report are shown on NBMG map E-49, Nevada Active Mines and Energy Producers, which is available at www.nbmg.unr.edu/dox/e49.pdf.

Wenchuan Earthquake (Ms = 8.0) triggered tens of thousands of landslides throughout an area of about 100,000 km2. The distribution of landslides is definitely affected by the such factors as geomorphology, topography, lithology and human engineering activities, but the distribution of earthquake-triggered landslides are mainly controlled by the co-seismic fault, for they present zontal distribution along the co-seismic fault.

This book presents different aspects of tectonic research. Syntheses of recent and earlier works, combined with new results and interpretations, are presented for diverse tectonic settings. Most of the chapters include up-to-date material of detailed geological investigations, often combined with geophysical data, which can help understand the essence of mechanisms of different tectonic processes more clearly. <...>