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 All the books on the market either were grossly out of date or didn’t discuss the modern understanding of California tectonics.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.

Учебное пособие написано в соответствии с государственным образовательным стандартом и учебным планом, предназначено студентов, обучающихся по направлению подготовки 21.02.19 Землеустройство. В пособии рассматриваются основы геологии, геоморфологии, почвоведения: строение и происхождение Земли, минералогические и петрографические, эндогенные и экзогенные процессы. Обобщены современные представления об историческом теле природы, изложены основные механизмы почвообразовательного процесса. Описаны состав, свойства, почвенные режимы, обусловливающие плодородие, их сочетание в разных типах почв и регулирование в агрономической практике. Проанализированы основные факторы почвообразования, освещены вопросы генезиса, классификации, свойств почв разных природных зон. Особое внимание уделено области агроэкологического землепользования. Изложены принципы почвоохранной деятельности, методы качественной оценки, основные приемы регулирования почвенного плодородия, защиты почв от эрозии и их рационального использования и другие вопросы

The south-west Pacific Ocean is a region of isolated islands and submerged plateaus and ridges (Figure 1). The three main islands of New Zealand (North, South, and Stewart) make up the largest landmass group in the region. Schists, greywackes, and granitoids are exposed in islands on the Challenger Plateau and Chatham Rise and have been sampled in dredges on the Campbell Plateau and Norfolk Ridge, thus demonstrating their continental geological character.

Geology is an Earth science concerned with the solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Geology can also include the study of the solid features of any terrestrial planet or natural satellite such as Mars or the Moon.