Glaciers and ice sheets are among the world’s most beautiful and fascinating natural wonders. Whereas today glacier ice covers approximately a tenth of Earth’s land surface, during the ice ages of the last few million years, as much as a third of the land surface was covered by glacier ice. Modern glaciers and ice sheets possess many interesting features that reflect their dynamics, their interaction with landscape, rock, sediment and water, and they also inform us about climate change. The legacy of ice masses is reflected in the presence of a variety of landforms and sediments, many of which are also recorded in the rock record. The value of glaciers to society is immense.

Coal is still a dominant fuel in America, Australia, China, Mongolia and Russia, but more and more countries are abandoning coal and turning to alternative sources of energy, increasingly renewable energy provided by wind, wave or solar power. So now is an opportune time to take stock of the impact that coal and coal mining have had on countries around the world. Some 48 countries have institutions recording or commemorating that history in the form of museums, heritage centres or preserved colliery sites, of which this book considers 432 examples. It is not a straightforward account of the history of coal mining but rather an examination of how that history has been presented by different institutions and cultures.

This collection of papers is aimed primarily at the environmental geoscientist faced with the challenges of communicating important scientific results to those who might benefit from them, whether they are politicians, policy-makers, potential victims of geological disasters, fellow scientists or other members of the public. Environmental geoscience has grown to become one of the most important disciplines of geoscience as a whole, and scientific methods of investigation have become sophisticated and effective at addressing numerous problems that directly affect health and safety. The audience for such research thus is wide, and for such research to be used in the most effective manner requires well-developed communication skills to reach an audience that varies greatly in education and ability to comprehend scientific concepts. The implications of failing to communicate effectively may be severe: geological disasters have had a massive economic and social impact, with major loss of life.

This comparative geochemical study of jasperoid in the northern Great Basin is based on 65 samples from 10 Carlin-type gold deposits and 22 similar but apparently barren hydro-thermal systems. Multielement geochemistry coupled with oxygen isotope data indicate that hydrothermal fluids in barren and mineralized systems evolved in different ways, and that there are fundamental geochemical differences among the various gold-producing deposits of the area.

Much of the variation in the jasperoid geochemical data can be explained in terms of seven abstract end-member components obtained through factor analysis. Three of these components (factors) dominate the results and are related to common products of alteration and mineralization in epithermal systems of the northern Great Basin. Element associations for these factors are: factor 1: Ti02, Al203, La, K20, Sr, Fe203, Th; factor 2: Au, Ag, Sb, Si02> As, Pb; and factor 3: W, B, V, Zn, Co, Au, CaO, Ni, Mn, Cu.