Water-related hazards—including floods, droughts, rainfall-triggered landslides, soil salinization—and their impacts have increased significantly in the past decades. This increase has spurred research into improving monitoring and prediction, understanding the underlying drivers, implementing various mitigation and adaptation strategies, and identifying interconnectivity with other factors such as climate change, population growth, exposure, and socioeconomic development.

Under the auspices of the Ministerio de Fomento of Peru, Mr. R. E. Coker was engaged in making studies and collections of animals of the Peruvian coast with the intention of contributing to the knowledge of the aquatic resources of the country. In the course of this work numerous economic notes were made in relation to the animals obtained.

On the portion of the collection consisting of Mollusca, the authorities of Peru, through the intervention of Mr. Coker, have requested the writer to prepare a report.

The Digital Map Production Implementation project initiated a review of the BGS Rock Classification Scheme in order to set up hierarchical schemes and master dictionaries of terms for the geological map digital database. This report describes the proposed classification schemes for drift (see Section 4 for definitions) of Pleistocene and Recent age comprising artificial (man-made) ground and natural superficial deposits.