This book is based on a series of lectures that has been given at Stanford University, for longer than I care to remember, to graduate students from several departments: Aeronautics and Astronautics, Applied Physics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Physics. The course has also formed part of the Astronomy Course Program and of the Space Science Program.

This is a book on the dynamics of the atmosphere and ocean, with an emphasis on the fundamentals and on the large-scale circulation. By ‘large-scale’ I mean scales between that of the weather (a few hundred kilometres in the atmosphere and a few tens of kilometres in the ocean, which indeed has its own weather) and the global scale. My focus is our own planet Earth, for that is where we live, but the principles and methodology used should be appropriate for the study of the atmospheres and oceans of other planets.

The Atlas of Minerals and Igneous and Metamorphic Rocks in Thin-Section provides the geology student and geoscientist with a stunning new color atlas of the main rock-forming minerals and igneous and metamorphic rocks in thin-section.

Heat flow data have been used extensively by geoscientists to provide an indication of temperature variations within the Earth. However, there are relatively few experts available with the necessary experience to provide a critique of the central constraints or to obtain new data for second-order models. Terminology relating to thermal conductivity, diffusivity, vitrinite reflectance, xenolith geochemistry, and so on, is widely recognised but poorly understood, particularly by industry professionals.

Over the past two decades, private companies have made increasing efforts at the global level to promote corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the environmental, labor, and human rights realms. This book traces private sector initiatives at the global, or international, level to promote social and environmental standards applicable to the mining sector.

This chapter introduces rocks and petrology, the science that attempts to explain the origin and distribution of rocks. Rocks are the solid material constituting the Earth, and it is essential to know what composition the planet has. We begin with a brief review of the planetary formation process and how it determined the Earth’s composition and major divisions into core and mantle.

This book grew out of class notes for a course that served two purposes:
1.    To familiarize graduate students in hydrogeology and environmental engineering with some practical methods for solving interpolation and related estimation problems. The course emphasized geostatistical methods.
2.    To illustrate how one may use data to develop empirical models, that is, to provide an introduction to applied statistical modeling.

The deep oceans and global seafloor are truly Earth’s last frontier. They remain largely unexplored, yet are critical to our survival on this planet. This magnificent volume transports you to volcanoes, boiling hot springs, and fault zones in mountains a mile beneath the ocean surface, where bizarre landscapes host exotic life forms that rival the most imaginative science fiction.

During the past two to three decades, the scanning electron microscope (SEM) has become established as an essential tool in the study of sedimentary rocks, sediments, and soils. It provides a useful complement to the traditional role of the petrographic microscope, which became popular after the pioneering work of Henry Clifton Sorby in the second half of the nineteenth century (Sorby, 1877a,b, 1878).

As a country rich in mineral resources, contemporary China remains surprisingly overlooked in the research about the much debated ‘resourcecurse’. This is the first full-length study to  examine the distinctive effects of mineral resources on the state, capital and labour and their interrelations in China. Jing Vivian Zhan draws on a wealth of empirical evidence, both qualitative and quantitative. Taking a subnational approach, she zooms in on local situations and demonstrates how mineral resources affect local governance and economic as well as human development.