The management of an oil company needs to be familiar with the acquisition, processing, and interpretation requirements that a 3-D survey may place on its staff. If a company’s management has had prior exposure to 3-D seismic surveys, less education by the technical staff (usually the geophysicists) is necessary before recommending a 3-D survey. There may be some preconceived ideas as to the final products that might be delivered at various stages. It is important to emphasize that success or failure in a past 3-D survey may not necessarily be duplicated in future programs. Modifying the design, acquisition, and processing parameters can make significant improvements. Conversely, results may be less than expected if poor design parameters are chosen. <...>

This volume highlights some of the frontiers in the study of plastic deformation of minerals and rocks. The research into the plastic properties of minerals and rocks had a major peak in late 1960s to early 1970s, largely stimulated by research in the laboratory of D.T. Griggs and his students and associates. Tt is the same time when the theoiy of plate tectonics was established and provided a first quantitative theoretical framework for understanding geological processes. The theory of plate tectonics stimulated the study of deformation properties of Earth materials, both in the brittle and the ductile regimes.

This book has grown and evolved from a course I teach at New Mexico Tech, which is taken chiefly by seniors and graduate students in the Earth Sciences. The rapid accumulation of data on plate tectonics, mantle evolution, and the origin of continents in the last decade has necessitated continued updating of the course. The book is written for an advanced undergraduate or graduate student, and it assumes a basic knowledge of geology, biology, chemistry, and physics that most students in the Earth Sciences acquire during their undergraduate education. It also may serve as a reference book for various specialists in the geological sciences who want to keep abreast of scientific advances in this field. I have attempted to synthesize and digest data from the fields of oceanography, geophysics, geology, planetology, and geochemistry, and to present this information in a systematic manner, addressing problems related to the evolution of the Earth's crust and mantle over the last 4 Gy. The role of plate tectonics in the geological past is examined in the light of geologic evidence, and examples of plate reconstructions are discussed. <...>

Plate tectonics is a major new paradigm, or scientific worldview, that profoundly changes our ideas about how the earth works. It has been compared to the Bohr theory of the atom in its simplicity, its elegance, and its ability to explain a wide range of experiments and observations.