Deltas, with their economic, political and scientific importance, have long fascinated and attracted Man's attention. The term 'delta' was coined by Herodotus in approximately 450 Bc for the triangular-shaped sedimentary body at the mouth of the River Nile. Today, the concept of a delta, its morphology and its controlling processes, are almost as numerous as the people who work on such systems.
This volume, of 23 papers on many aspects of modern and ancient deltaic sedimentary systems, will be useful to researchers as well as teachers and students alike. The well-balanced content of the book should prove particularly attractive.to those who seek a detailed state-of-the-science overview of this large and ever-expanding subject area. <...>

This Special Publication celebrates the life and times of one of the late 20th century's most influential structural geologists, Mike Coward. At various times Mike was H H Read Professor of Geology at Imperial College, Chair of the UK Tectonic Studies Group and Council Member of the Geological Society of London; but these official titles belie a deeply unconventional man who loved to challenge accepted wisdom and dogma. Mike's career was an eclectic mix of pure and applied research in structural geology that straddled continents and geological time. Normal chronological narratives can hardly do justice to a man who could step from theme to theme at times, seemingly to colleagues, almost on a daily basis. This brief biography attempts to draw together some of the strands, in rather the same way as the Special Publication itself, to offer a glimpse of a character who could be very much larger than life. <...>

The flow of glacier ice can produce structures that are striking and beautiful. Associated sediments, too, can develop spectacular deformation structures and examples are remarkably well preserved in Quaternary deposits. Although such features have long been recognized, they are now the subject of new attention from glaciologists and glacial geologists. However, these workers are not always fully aware of the methods for unravelling deformation structures evolved in recent years by structural geologists, who themselves may not be fully aware of the opportunities offered by glacial materials. This book, and the conference from which it stemmed, were conceived of as a step towards bridging this apparent gap between groups of workers with potentially overlapping interests.

Martin Casey, who died on the 10 June 2008 after a short illness, was a structural geologist of world renown. He led numerical approaches to understanding rock deformation and the development of tectonic structures, pioneering the quantitative analysis of rock fabrics, textures and folds. These researches now underpin diverse areas of geology, such as quantifying the strength of rocks in the crust which leads to calibrations of the seismic properties of the minerals in continents and the prediction of the fine-scale structure of hydrocarbon reservoirs. This Special Publication is dedicated to his memory not only for his fundamental contribution to science but also as a mentor, colleague and friend. <...>

It is my great pleasure to introduce this volume dedicated to my long-standing colleague and friend, Henk Zwart; the more so since I missed the opportunity of addressing him on the occasion of his retirement from the chair of structural and applied geology in the State University at Utrecht in 1988.

This volume is derived from the 13th meeting on Deformation Mechanisms, Rheology and Tectonics (DRT2003). The meeting was held in St Malo (Brittany, France) in April 2003, and organized by an informal group from Gdosciences Rennes (UMR 6118 CNRS, Rennes University), including Michel Ballbvre, St6phane Bonnet, Arlette Falaise, Olivier Galland, Fr6d6ric Gueydan, Charles Gumiaux, Benjamin Le Bayon, Alain-Herv6 Le Gall, Monique Le Moigne, Sylvie Schueller, and C61ine Tirel. It was sponsored by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Rennes University, the ity of Rennes, the Conseil G6n6ral d'Ille et Vilaine, and the R6gion Bretagne. Forty-eight reviewers have worked hard to improve the papers. We thank these persons and institutions for their contributions.

The Gres d'Annot (Annot Sandstone) Formation of SE France includes some of the world's best exposures of sandy turbidites and has been the source of highly influential models of turbidite system development. This formation is now considered as a model example of a tectonically-controlled confined turbiditic ramp, and the Gres d'Annot outcrops constitute a classic area for academic and industrial field courses on deep-water gravity flow deposits. From the early 1930s, the focus of research on these extensive exposures has moved progressively from lithostratigraphy and structural interpretation to sedimentology, seismic-scale architecture of turbidite bodies, evaluation of tectonic controls, and more recently to detailed characterization of the turbidite units as hydrocarbon reservoir analogues <...>

The last decade has witnessed the expansion of field work and the recovery of many important new fossil vertebrates from a number of areas in the Rocky Mountain Interior. This has resulted in (among other things) discovery of many previously unknown taxa and of much better preserved specimens of known forms, significant geographic and temporal range extensions, the development of greater temporal resolution and sampling density for many taxa (leading to much more precise biochronology), and the creation and applicaton of models for examining faunal relations and evolutionary patterns. When the opportunity for this symposium arose, we were faced with the dilemma of how to incorporate as much of this new information as possible, yet limit the resulting monograph to manageable proportions. We decided to confine the subject matter geographically and temporally, to a region and a time span with which we are most familiar and within which much of the exciting new research is now being conducted—the latest Cretaceous and early Tertiary of the northern Rocky Mountain region. This volume is derived from papers presented at that symposium on May 2,1987, at the annual regional meeting of the Rocky Mountain Section of the Geological Society of America, held at the University of Colorado in Boulder <...>

A wide diversity of techniques is now available to help constrain the timing and duration of fluid flow events and fluid-rock interactions in sedimentary basins. Dating methods in rocks traditionally focus on the use of minerals that contain radiogenic isotopes (U-Pb, Pb-Pb, K-Ar, Rb-Sr in particular). I do not intend to dwell on this approach as it is covered adequately elsewhere (e.g. Faure 1986), but it is worthwhile emphasizing that certain phases that are commonly precipitated during diagenesis in sedimentary basins are suitable for such techniques (see below). The range of techniques summarized below were mostly presented in a Queen's University Geofluids Group International Seminar on Dating of Fluid Flow, incorporated within the Geofluids II conference held at Belfast in March 1997. <...>

A consideration of the interactions between glaciers and permafrost is essential to many environmental studies of cold regions. This paper reviews how concepts, field data and experimental studies from glaciology and geocryology can provide a basis for improved understanding of some of the key glacier-permafrost interactions at scales ranging from continental ice sheets to small proglacial streams. Glacitectonic processes are strongly influenced by water pressures beneath subglacial and proglacial permafrost, and by the amount of unfrozen water within the permafrost.