The formation of sedimentary rocks may be reduced, in its most generat form, to the following scheme: mobilization of substances by weathering of parent rocks or by other means-+transfer of sedimentary material and partial deposition of this material in the course of transport -+arrival of the sediments at the terminal discharge basins and the final precipitation of the sediments here, which is conditioned by the physicochemical and hydrobiological peculiarities of the basins-+eonversion of sediments to rocks <...>

Today’s Turkey occupies an important geopolitical location: the junction of Europe and Asia. Geographically, Turkey is composed of Anatolia (the so-called Asia Minor) and Thrace, an eastern section of Europe. The Sea of Marmara, which is an inland sea, together with the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus separates Anatolia from Thrace and, at the same time, Asia from Europe. Being surrounded on three sides – by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean Sea to the west and the Black Sea to the north – Turkey offers the characteristics of a peninsula. Turkey is one of the charter members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and G20 (the Group of 20) where the world’s leading industrialised and developing countries meet to gather and discuss international affairs. The Customs Union Agreement between Turkey and the European Union plays a significant role in the development of the foreign tradecapability of the country. Construction, automotive, electronics, banking, textiles, petrochemistry, food, mining, agriculture and machinery industries are currently the leading sectors of Turkey’s economy <...>

This textbook is intended to be used in a lecture course for college students majoring in the Earth Sciences. Planetary science provides an opportunity for these students to apply a wide range of subject matter pertaining to the Earth to the study of other planets of the solar system and their principal satellites.

Literally, “Mineralogy” means science of minerals.

The term “mineral” was coined in the late Middle Ages; it is derived from the Medieval Latin word mina = shaft (minare = to mine). The antique people, e.g., the Greeks and Romans, only used the word “stone”. Special attention was dedicated to precious stones, distinguished by their lustre, colour and hardness, which were highly estimated by the old civilised nations already in pre-Greek times.

The main developments during four decades of geostatistical applications on the Witwatersrand-type gold deposits are reviewed and critically compared with a view to highlighting the progress made to date. The basic techniques - from the preliminary borehole valuation of mining properties to the block estimating of ore reserves and foreseeable recoveries are analysed and the prospects for methodological improvements are discussed.

Stochastic simulation has been suggested as a viable method for characterizing the uncertainty associated with the prediction of a nonlinear function of a spatially-varying parameter. Geostatistical simulation algorithms generate realizations of a random field with specified statistical and geostatistical properties. A nonlinear function (called a transfer function) is evaluated over each realization to obtain an uncertainty distribution of a system response that reflects the spatial variability and uncertainty in the parameter. Crucial management decisions, such as potential regulatory compliance of proposed nuclear waste facilities and optimal allocation of resources in environment al remediation, are based on the resulting system response uncertainty distribution. <...>

Although it is generally understood that the Antarctic Ice Sheet plays a critical role in the changing global system, there is to date still a lack of generally available information on the subject. Climatic change and the role of the polar areas are often discussed in the media.

Craters on the Earth are traces on the path our planet has followed to come to existence from the early nebula which was filling this corner of the galaxy.
Millions of cataclysmic events were necessary about five billions of years ago to form the Earth. We do not have evidences of this part of the Earth history on the surface. However, impacts continued through the Ages and traces of the most recent craters are present over the surface of the Earth. Documenting them through satellite observations provides important information on the genesis of our planet through a very valuable, systematic observational approach.

Geostatistical techniques are extensively used for mineral resources assessment, including grade estimation and uncertainty analysis. Support is the term used in Geostatistics to describe the size or volume of a sample. For example, suppose a grade sample obtained from diamond drill holes (DDH). In this case, the support is a function of the core’s radius and length.

The Second European Conference on Geostatistics for Environmental Applications took place in Valencia, November 18-20, 1998. Two years have past from the first meeting in Lisbon and the geostatistical community has kept active in the environmental field. In these days of congress inflation, we feel that continuity can only be achieved by ensuring quality in the papers. For this reason, all papers in the book have been reviewed by, at least, two referees, and care has been taken to ensure that the reviewer comments have been incorporated in the final version of the manuscript. We are thankful to the members of the scientific committee for their timely review of the scripts. All in all, there are three keynote papers from experts in soil science, climatology and ecology and 43 contributed papers providing a good indication of the status of geostatistics as applied in the environmental field all over the world. We feel now confident that the geoENV conference series, seeded around a coffee table almost six years ago, will march firmly into the next century. <...>