The African continent preserves a long geological record that covers almost 75% of Earth’s history. The Pan-African orogeny (c. 600–500 Ma) brought together old continental kernels (or cratons such as West African, Congo, Kalahari and Tanzania) forming Gondwana and subsequently the supercontinent Pangea by the late Palaeozoic (Fig. 1).
The break-up of Pangea since the Jurassic and Cretaceous, primarily through the opening of the Central Atlantic (e.g. Torsvik et al. 2008; Labails et al. 2010), Indian (e.g. Gaina et al. 2007; Mu¨ller et al. 2008; Cande et al. 2010) and South Atlantic (e.g. Torsvik et al. 2009) oceans and the complicated subduction history to the north gradually shaped the African continent and its surrounding oceanic basins. Many first-order questions of African geology are still unanswered.

This book has its origins in a conference with the same theme that was run by the Geological Remote Sensing Group (GRSG) in December 2004. The GRSG is a Special Interest Group of the Geological Society of London and the Remote Sensing and Photogrammetric Society. A key objective of the GRSG is to increase the awareness of geoscientists, and the general public, about ways in which remote sensing can be used to map and monitor the Earth’s surface. To that end the GRSG holds at least one conference each year, produces a quarterly newsletter and runs a website (http://www.grsg.org).

This volume is the result of a discussion workshop (EZ 82) with field excursions and oral presentations which was based at Nottingham University in the spring of 1982. The editors would like to thank the numerous reviewers who helped them in their task of compiling this volume and those who helped arrange the workshop, particularly Graham Aplin, Jack Pattison, Tim Pettigrew and Jean Pearson. Tim Pettigrew helped with some preliminary editing. One of us (GMH) would like to apologize for any delay in reviewing and editing manuscripts caused by recent moves back and forth across the Atlantic. Both editors hope that this volume will help workers on the Zechstein and other evaporite basins to understand some of their problems better and that it will stimulate further Zechstein research.

Think of volcanoes, and you might picture an eruption column jetting from a summit crater, punching through the atmosphere with roiling coils of dark ash. Or perhaps you are of a more tranquil disposition and imagine a peaceful summit crater but brightly stained with orange and yellow minerals deposited from fumarolic clouds hissing through vents and fissures amidst the scree. It goes without saying that gases are behind both these manifestations, providing the violence needed to propel eruption plumes to altitudes of tens of kilometres, or leaking more slowly from unseen magma bodies to fuel hydrothermal systems (Fig. 1). The speciation and exsolution of these volatiles in magmas, the quantification of their emissions into the atmosphere, the application of such measurements for volcano monitoring purposes, and characterization of their impacts on the environment (in its broadest sense) are the subjects of this book <...>

The purpose of this short contribution is to provide an overview of our current state of knowledge of Africa's petroleum systems as an introduction to the detailed volume accounts that follow. Toward that end we introduce a set of maps on a supplementary CD compiled by Purdy as part of a confidential report provided to industry subscribers some ten years ago. The maps include subsurface as well as surface structural information but, because of their vintage, have not taken account of more recent information. Nonetheless, the regional geological framework apparent on the maps has not changed and, in that sense, the maps are as relevant today as when they were first compiled. Moreover the maps serve as a useful building block on which more recently acquired exploration data can be readily added by others using facilitating computer programs. <...>

The papers in this book review and partly summarise the present state of knowledge concerning the Caledonides of the British Isles--broadly the history of geological events from about 700 to 400 million years ago including events in the type area of Caledonia, Scotland. Many of the papers report new work and the volume is a contribution to the study of the Caledonide orogenic belt that was originally continuous from Scandinavia through Britain and Ireland to N America.
The papers arose from a conference organised by the Irish and British working groups of the Caledonide Orogen Project 27 (International Geological Correlation Programme). The conference was held under the aegis of The Royal Society of London, The Royal Irish Academy, The Geological Society of London, The Royal Dublin Society and The Royal Society of Edinburgh. It was generously sponsored by The Royal Society of London and by the following industrial organisations to whom the working groups wish to express their sincere appreciation.

The volume focuses on the analysis of glacial clastic sedimentary deposits, both ancient and recent. The papers range from reviews of glacial systems and cold-climate weathering products and processes to conceptual and field studies of specific ice-marginal and cold-climate sediments. Papers are included that deal with tidewater glaciers, mountain settings on Earth, permafrost areas on both Earth and Mars and detailed regional analyses of cold-climate sediments of Late Pleistocene and Holocene age. The identification of sedimentary facies allows an accurate reconstruction of many of the developmental processes that are involved in ice-marginal and periglacial environments. Lithostratigraphic characteristics of clastic deposits also constitute circumstantial evidence for the previous existence of ancient, and certainly pre-Quaternary, cold-climate systems. This is demonstrated by a study on putative Palaeozoic glacial deposits in Saudi Arabia. <...>

The evolution of the global oceanic and atmospheric circulation systems has been affected by several forcing processes, with orbital variations being dominant on shorter geological time scales. Over longer periods of time (>10 Ma) the tectonic evolution of the solid Earth has been recognized as the major control on the development of the global climate system. Tectonic activity acts in one of two different ways to influence regional and global climate. The earliest solid Earthclimatic interaction recognized was the effect that the opening and closure of oceanic gateways had on the circulation patterns in the global ocean. Major effects on regional and sometimes global climate have been attributed to such changes, e.g. closure of the Isthmus of Panama (Driscoll & Haug 1998). Since the late 1980s a second form of climate-tectonic interaction has been recognized, involving the growth and erosion of orogenic belts. In this second category the Arabian Sea region must be considered the global type example. <...>

The Pamir–Tibet–Himalaya orogenic system (Fig. 1) has been growing as a consequence of the collision between the Eurasian and the Indian plates since the Early Eocene (e.g. Hodges 2000). While the time of formation and the magnitude of shortening across the Tibetan Plateau are relatively well constrained, its origin and evolution are disputed, untested, or unknown (e.g. Yin & Harrison 2000).

Mineral deposits are the source of all the metals, industrial and bulk minerals that feed the global economy. In addition to being key primary sources of wealth generation, mineral deposits are also valuable windows through which to view the evolution and interrelationships of the Earth system. Unlike hydrocarbon deposits that are largely restricted to more recent phases of geological time, mineral deposits have formed throughout the last 3.8 billion years of the Earth's history. As such they preserve key evidence for early magmatic and tectonic processes, the state of the atmosphere and hydrosphere, and the evolution of life. Furthermore, the very activities of exploration, evaluation and mining of mineral deposits, generate more comprehensive 3D geological information than is generally obtainable in unmineralized rocks, and increasing amounts of this formerly proprietary data are being released into the public domain. <...>