Worldwide supplies of conventional natural gas are declining; new, unconventional forms of energy resources are required to meet the increase in demand. Among these unconventional resources are gas hydrates, which are solid, icelike forms of methane and water that form under lowtemperature and high-pressure regimes. Gas hydrates exist in abundance worldwide, and some estimates suggest that the total amount of natural gas found in gas hydrates may exceed all known conventional gas resources.

Geophysical methods are based on studying the propagation of the different physical fields within the earth’s interior. One of the most widely used fields in geophysics is the electromagnetic field generated by natural or artificial (controlled) sources. Electromagnetic methods comprise one of the three principle technologies in applied geophysics (the other two being seismic methods and potential field methods). In this book the author presents both the foundations and the most recent achievements of electromagnetic geophysical methods in the framework of a unified systematic exposition.

In China, oil and gas resources mainly accumulated in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic continental basins, and the proven reserves of oil and gas in continental basins account for three-quarters and nearly half of China’s total reserves, respectively (Zhai, 1996). Almost 95% of the proven oil reserves in China are concentrated in continental basins (Dai, 2000). After more than half a century of exploration, a large number of structural reservoirs and some lithological and stratigraphic reservoirs were discovered in continental basins. Although the exploration efforts of many Mesozoic and Cenozoic basins has been relatively high, especially for eastern basins, there is still a great potential for the exploration of lithological and stratigraphic reservoirs. In order to promote petroleum exploration development, we must develop new technologies and methods, and strengthen the basic research theories targeting lithological and stratigraphic reservoirs, using petroleum geological characteristics of continental basins (Jia, 2003). <...>

The book explains the key notions and fundamental processes of the dynamics of the fluid envelopes of the Earth (transposable to other planets) from the unifying viewpoint of rotating shallow-water model (RSW). The model, in its one- or two-layer versions, plays a distinguished role in geophysical fluid dynamics. It has been used now for about acentury to aid conceptual understanding of various phenomena, for elaboration of approaches and methods to be used later in more complete models, for development and testing of numerical codes and schemes of data assimilations, and for many other purposes.