Humans live on unsteady ground. This fact was made abruptly apparent on January 12, 2010, when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated the Caribbean island nation of Haiti. Because many buildings in thisimpoverished country were poorly constructed, they could not withstand the shaking and collapsed en masse, particularly in the capital city of Portau-Prince, 15 miles from the quake’s epicenter. Rescue workers desperately combed through rubble, hunting for survivors. By early February, Haiti’s prime minister estimated that more than 200,000 people had been killed by the earthquake’s effects. This type of earthquake, caused by two separate sections, or plates, of the Earth’s crust sliding against each other is known as a strike-slip earthquake. It is just one example of the restlessness of Earth’s surface. <...>

Teresa Valente Editorial for Special Issue “Pollutants in Acid Mine Drainage” Reprinted from

Darrell Kirk Nordstrom Geochemical Modeling of Iron and Aluminum Precipitation during Mixing and Neutralization of Acid Mine Drainage
Cl ´ementine Drapeau, Rabei Argane, C ´ecile Delolme, Denise Blanc, Mostafa Benzaazoua and Rachid Hakkou et al. Lead Mobilization and Speciation in Mining Waste: Experiments and Modeling
Elliott K. Skierszkan, John W. Dockrey, K. Ulrich Mayer, Viorica F. Bondici, Joyce M. McBeth and Roger D. Beckie Geochemical Controls on Uranium Release from Neutral-pH Rock Drainage Produced by Weathering of Granite, Gneiss, and Schist
Mariana Lemos, Teresa Valente, Paula Marinho Reis, Rita Fonseca, Itamar Delbem and Juliana Ventura et al. Mineralogical and Geochemical Characterization of Gold Mining Tailings and Their Potential to Generate Acid Mine Drainage (Minas Gerais, Brazil)

Sandstone reservoirs are the host for almost 60 percent of the world’s oil and gas reserves, and an understanding of the factors that determine the location and distribution of reservoir-quality sandstones is essential for any successful exploration and exploitation program.

 Three of the major copper provinces of the Tethyan metallogenic belt lie within Iran. Two of these, the southeastern and north western provinces, contain the major Sar-Cheshmeh (1.2 Gt @ 0.7% Cu, 0.03% Mo) and Sungun (500 Mt @ 0.75% Cu, 0.01% Mo) porphyry copper deposits respectively. The copper mineralisation of these provinces bears a direct relationship to the evolution and closure of the Neo-Tethys Ocean and the collision of the Iranian and Afro-Arabian plates. All of the significant porphyry type copper deposits in Iran are associated with granitoids of the subduction-related, Eocene to Miocene age, volcanism and plutonism in the northwest-southeast oriented Central Iranian Volcano-Plutonic Belt (better known as the Urumieh-Dokhtar Magmatic Arc). The peak of mineralisation was during the Miocene. The Urumieh-Dokhtar Magmatic Arc developed in parallel with the collisional Zagros Fold and Thrust Belt to the southwest, and the intervening Sanandaj-Sirjan Metamorphic Zone. Although many examples of porphyry copper mineralisation are known within these provinces, potential still remains for large discoveries in several prospective districts through further studies and systematic exploration.