This book presents different aspects of earthquake research. In includes syntheses of recent works combined with new results and interpretations, applicable to diverse branches of earthquake seismology and geology. 
The destructive potential of earthquakes depends on their magnitude and the placement of the hypocenter. Worldwide efforts, such as the Global Seismographic Network of seismological and geophysical sensors and data centers, provides information that is essential to identify earthquake locations, understand the physics of the earthquakes and faulting mechanisms, as well as studies on paleoseismicity and earthquakes in the human history.

Hazards are processes that produce danger to human life and infrastructure. Risks are the potential or possibilities that something bad will happen because of the hazards. Disasters are that quite unpleasant result of the hazard occurrence that caused destruction of lives and infrastructure. Hazards, risks, and disasters have been coming under increasing strong scientific scrutiny in recent decades as a result of a combination of numerous unfortunate factors, many of which are quite out of control as a result of human actions.

This book was inspired when I began to teach California geology at the college level and found there were no books suitable for such a course. All the books on the market either were grossly out of date or didn’t discuss the modern understanding of California tectonics. California has one of the most amazing and complex histories of any state in the United States, and so the simplistic approaches of the books currently on the market do not do it justice.

The Earth is our familiar home, yet the geological processes which underlie our tenure on it can seem intimidatingly vast, ancient, and sometimes even alien—certainly beyond everyday human experience. Our planet’s origins and upheavals have fascinated humans for millennia, but only recently have we developed a clear understanding of how the Earth actually works.
Many people alive today were born at a time when no one knew where Earth’s constituents came from, why continents move, how diamonds are made, what causes earthquakes, when life started, or whether geological processes occur elsewhere in the Universe. We now know a great deal about all these things, and geology is expanding at breakneck speed.Long before it had a name, geology was a crucial part of human knowledge. Even before agriculture, humans needed to know where water was wrung from the ground, where the best tool-stones could be found, and how to choose a stable, safe campsite. This knowledge expanded with the advent of farming and settlements around ten thousand years ago—working the land where minerals in the soil would make crops and beasts thrive, carving irrigation channels and trackways into the ground, and hewing stones to build the new villages and cities. <...>

Принципы геологии: исследование того, в какой степени прежние изменения поверхности Земли можно объяснить причинами, действующими в настоящее время.

The outer Solar System may seem an unlikely destination for future human travels, let alone settlements. The cold and distant worlds of gas, rock, and ice seem to repel rather than to beckon. Humans have been to the Moon, and we have our sights fi rmly upon Mars and the asteroids, but could there be a role to play by the outer Solar System in the drama of humanity’s future? 

In 1543, Nicolaus Copemicus iuvenled the solar system. "Hold on!" you say. Surely the solar system had been there forever, and Copemicus didn't just iuvent it. Yes and no! What Copemicus had revealed and iuvented was the arrangement of the planets-a stunningly new way of mappiug them. He revolutionized the way humankind would conceive of the planets as a system, controlled by the Sun. "Thus iudeed," Copernicus wrote, "the sun, as though sealed on a royal throne, governs the family of planets revolving around it." Nick Kanas has documented this revolutionary shift iu his ingeniously illustrated album of solar system images, all historical even though the modern views, ''postcards from space", are scarcely a few decades old.

Учебная геологическая практика является частью программы обучения, по направлению подготовки 08.03.01 Строительство. Учебная практика является одним из основных видов подготовки студентов и представляет собой комплексные практические занятия, дополняемые другими видами учебного процесса, в ходе которого осуществляется формирование основных первичных профессиональных умений и приобретение навыков работы в коллективе.
На практических занятиях студенты получают представление о строении и вещественном составе земной коры; породообразующих минералах, составляющих горные породы; наиболее распространенных горных породах, их происхождении. 
Умения определять основные свойства горных пород и минералов. Главная цель практики - закрепление и углубление полученных студентами притеоретическом обучении знаний.