More landslides can be expected as climate change exacerbates rainfall intensity. The long-term trend of the last 40 years has seen the number of major recorded extreme weather events almost double, notably floods, storms, landslides, and wildfires. Landslides are a serious geological hazard. Among the host of natural triggers are intense rainfall, flooding, earthquakes or volcanic eruption, and coastal erosion caused by storms that are all too often tied to the El Niсo phenomenon.

Coalbed gas has been considered a hazard since the early 19th century when the first mine gas explosions occurred in the United States in 1810 and France in 1845. In eastern Australia methane-related mine disasters occurred late in the 19th century with hundreds of lives lost in New South Wales, and as recently as 1995 in Queensland's Bowen Basin.

The earth is a giant system including the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, biosphere, and the mantle, core and planetary space. Earth science is the study on the substance composition, origin, formation, evolution and the interaction of each part of the earth system. In the late 20th century, the earth science developed towards the earth system science, focusing on the lithosphere, and gradually extended to the relationship and interaction with the other layers.

Indian Geotechnical Conference (IGC 2018) was held at the National Science Complex of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, during 13–15 December 2018. This is the annual conference of the Indian Geotechnical Society (IGS), which was established in the year 1948 with the aim to promote cooperation among the engineers, scientists and practitioners for the advancement and dissemination of knowledge in the field of geotechnical engineering. IGC 2018 was a special event since it coincided with the 70 years celebrations of IGS.

Geologists are mainly concerned with the study of the lithosphere. The sedimentary and metasedimentary rocks, although they constitute only 5 % of the lithosphere by volume, they occupy 75% of the exposed land area (PETTIJOHN, 1957). Thus, the study of sedimentary rocks is the major problem of geology. An obvious question arises in the study of sedimentary rocks: Under what conditions and by which processes were the sedimentary rocks in question deposited.

In a country like India various types of earth science data have been generated for about 170 years by the Geological Survey of India (GSI) and subsequently by its much younger sister organizations like Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Indian Bureau of Mines, Atomic Minerals Division, Central Ground Water Board etc. and a number of public sector undertakings like Hindustan Copper Limited, Hindustan Zinc Limited etc. In addition to these various earth science related organizations, State Departments of Mines and Geology and a number of academic institutions and Geology Departments under the various universities and Indian Institute of Technologies have come up after the independence of India.

The book lays emphasis on ore deposit set ups, structural permeability and proximity indicator minerals that have relevance in assessing mineral potential of prospective terrains. It also covers aspects of geophysical framework, data acquisition and challenges posed by the declining rate of new mineral discoveries of economic significance.

Uranium is a trace element in the earth’s crust. Because of its low content and uneven distribution, the abundance of uranium in the earth’s crust varies greatly. The general value is on the order of parts per million (10−6), while the highest value can reach 10−4. Although it may seem that the content of uranium is minor, In fact, it is higher than that of tungsten, mercury, silver, and other familiar metals, being even thousands of times higher than that of gold!

Die Erde, der Mond und einige andere Himmelskörper sind aus Gesteinen aufgebaut. Gesteine sind aus meist mehreren Mineralen geformt und können daher als Mineralaggregate beschrieben werden. Minerale bestehen aus einem Element (z.B. Silber, Kupfer) oder einer chemischen Verbindung (z.B. Halit, NaCl) und aus einem festen, kristallinen, symmetrischen Körper, d.h. sie weisen eine Kristallstruktur mit regelmäßig angeordneten Atomen, Ionen oder Molekülen auf. Minerale sind auf natürliche Weise im Erdkörper gewachsen – und wurden durch einen geologischen Prozess gebildet.

The landforms of Austria are the direct consequence of a continuous interplay between tectonic and climatic forces that have built, destroyed and reshaped the surface of the most iconic mountain belt on Earth for almost 40 Million years. As such, landforms can only be understood with a thorough geological background. This paper gives an overview of the tectonic evolution, the geological build up and the landscape evolution in the Austrian territory. The tectonic evolution of the rocks forming the major tectonic units of Austria can be traced back to some 500 Million years when they were located at different ancient continents including Gondwana, Avalonia and Laurasia. In the late Palaeozoic, the basement rocks were affected by the Variscan tectonometamorphic event during amalgamation of the supercontinent Pangaea and by a Permian extensional event.