Product Description

The third edition of this widely acclaimed textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to all aspects of global tectonics, and includes major revisions to reflect the most significant recent advances in the field.

• A fully revised third edition of this highly acclaimed text written by eminent authors including one of the pioneers of plate tectonic theory
  
• Major revisions to this new edition reflect the most significant recent advances in the field, including new and expanded chapters on Precambrian tectonics and the supercontinent cycle and the implications of plate tectonics for environmental change
  
• Combines a historical approach with process science to provide a careful balance between geological and geophysical material in both continental and oceanic regimes
  
• Dedicated website available at www.blackwellpublishing.com/kearey/

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #197479 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Review
Global Tectonics will find its place in all well equipped libraries and a personal copy will be of use for any geoscientist who needs a comprehensive overview. (Surveys in Geophysics, September 2009)

This textbook provides a comprehensive overview of the field of global tectonics. Because the field has changed significantly since the last edition was published, the majority of text and figures in the third edition are new. ( Book News, September 2009)

From the Back Cover
The third edition of this widely acclaimed textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to all aspects of global tectonics. Revisions to this new edition reflect the most significant recent advances in the field, providing a thorough, accessible, and up–to–date text. Combining a historical approach with process science, Global Tectonics provides a careful balance between geological and geophysical material in both continental and oceanic regimes.

New and expanded chapters in this third edition include Precambrian tectonics and the supercontinent cycle; mantle processes, including mantle plumes; the implications of plate tectonics for environmental change; large igneous provinces; rifted continental margins; ocean ridges; continental transforms; subduction zones; and numerous orogenic examples.

Written in an engaging style, this important text is an essential reference for undergraduates and graduate students who have a basic introduction in the geosciences.

About the Author
Phil Kearey was Senior Lecturer in Applied Geophysics in the Department of Earth Sciences at Bristol University, U.K. prior to his premature death in 2003. In his research he used various types of geophysical data, but gravity and magnetic data in particular, to elucidate crustal structure in the eastern Caribbean, Canadian shield and southern England.

Keith Klepeis is a Professor in the Department of Geology at the University of Vermont, U.S.A. He specializes in the areas of structural geology and continental tectonics and has worked extensively on the evolution of orogenic belts and fault systems in New Zealand, Patagonia, West Antarctica, Australia, British Columbia and southeast Alaska.

Fred Vine is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and has received numerous awards for work on the interpretation of oceanic magnetic anomalies and ophiolites, fragments of oceanic crust thrust up on land, in terms of sea floor spreading.

Customer Reviews

Seems somewhat dated in 2001. Hard to read.
This is one book given in a long preparatory reading list provided by the Open University for a course on "The Earth's Interior".
This is the 5th of the list which I have read. It has been the least readable. It muddles cause and effect. It jumps between sections of a subject without good signposting. It states categorically that full information can be found about a subject in a twenty-year-old paper. It often makes annoying statements that the research results affect geological processes, when it should say that the research affects the interpretation of geological processes.
There are a few topics in this book in which the explanations are better than in other books of similar topics.
It has been a most disappointing read, when I had expected that it would have been much more enlightening and clearer.
It is described as a "second edition", but is not as up-to-date as would be expected for a subject area in which there has been so much recent progress.