Before the revolution of plate tectonics in the 1960s, geology students were
often taught long lists of facts, the names of fossils, minerals and rocks.
There was little context for all this information. But plate tectonics provided
the key framework for linking these facts together. Separate evolution of land
animals in Australia relates to the continent鈥檚 separation from Africa, the
building of mountains in Asia can be matched with the opening of the Indian
ocean. Through making these types of links, today鈥檚 geology students are far
more accustomed to drawing together the strands of different, complex arguments,
than memorising facts.

Since the heady days of revolution the treatment in textbooks of tectonics,
the study of a dynamic and restless Earth, has become rather staid. It is giving
way to a shapeless field of study centred on environmental concerns as
university degree courses seek ever greater human relevance. Admittedly,
geologists have been a bit quirky up to now by tending to concentrate on the
planet鈥檚 crust to the exclusion of its depths. But going by what鈥檚 seen in the
bookshops and in university curricula, they now seem intent on going shallower
still, and not worrying too much about anything deeper than groundwater.

Not so. What we have instead is a lot of pioneering basic research that
simply hasn鈥檛 filtered through to the textbooks. Since the mid-1980s, geologists
have been busy looking at the world beneath the plates. As a result, we now know
that the liquid outer core convects, and that the continuous flow of molten iron
generates the Earth鈥檚 magnetic field. We are finally getting a picture of the
solid mantle as a giant heat engine that not only drives the plates but does a
whole lot more besides.

Unfortunately for students, not to mention the textbook writers,
understanding convection in solid rocks isn鈥檛 easy. Many students think that
convection only happens in liquids and presume that the plates float about on
molten mantle. While melting explains what happens in the outer core, it is not
the answer for the mantle. Although it is extremely hot in the mantle, the
pressure is too high for the rocks to melt. Like ice, solid rock can flow, but
ten thousand times more slowly than the ice of a glacier. The flow can speed
up鈥攁s it does when the rocks weaken during chemical reactions鈥攐r
break up entirely.

At present, textbooks focus on how flow happens to the rocks in the Earth鈥檚
crust. Over the coming years, watch out for books that dig deeper, into rocks in
the mantle. We know the mantle flows, but debate continues about whether
convection overturns the mantle as a whole, or whether it occurs in layers
(seeNew 杏吧原创, 17 October 1998, p 39).
It is this that holds the key to how the plates move.

Seismic tomography is giving us a critical breakthrough in understanding
convection in the mantle. This technique uses the energy from earthquakes to map
out its upwelling and sinking regions: hot, upwelling mantle transmits seismic
energy more slowly that cold, sinking mantle. Making these maps requires
powerful computers to handle the signals of thousands of earthquakes recorded
from all over the earth. The results are stunning images of plates from the
surface down almost to the base of the mantle, about 2900 kilometres below. It鈥檚
revolutionary stuff, but some accessible accounts have already surfaced (鈥淎 lava
lamp model for the deep earth鈥�, Science, 19 March 1999, vol 283, p
1826).

Moving plates are not the only surface manifestation of unrest in the deep
mantle. The vast lava fields that erupt periodically over geological time, such
as the Deccan Traps of western India or the ocean island hot-spot chain that
makes up Hawaii, have their source in the rapid upwelling of hot rock from deep
in the mantle. These so-called 鈥減lumes鈥� appear to originate in the boundary
between core and mantle. The process seems to be something like this: solid
mantle rises swiftly towards the surface, decompresses and melts. Lavas are then
thrown out. Interestingly, these show some chemical signatures of ancient
sediments and seawater, recycled from subducted oceanic plates (see 鈥淯nmixing
Hawaiian cocktails鈥�, Nature, 24 June 1999, p 733). This finding
confirms the old idea that the core-mantle boundary is the graveyard of plates.
Seismic imaging has begun to show us where the graveyards are
thickest鈥攑oints where, perhaps, new mantle plumes are emerging.

All this adds up to a picture that鈥檚 less and less like a jigsaw puzzle made
up of two-dimensional plates. Geology is the study of the whole Earth, after
all, so we need a third dimension. It鈥檚 becoming more like 3D chess, as played
by our favourite Vulcan, Star Trek鈥檚 Mr Spock. To play the game,
geology students need to 鈥渞ead鈥� the spectacular new images of the deep. Today鈥檚
3D models of the mantle circulation, of rising plumes and subducting plates,
show a restless interior pushing and pulling at our planet鈥檚 skin.

And this brings us back to our starting point鈥攖he surface.

Ultimately, the processes deep in the mantle are one of the forces changing
our climate. As oceans change shape, so do their currents, which in turn affect
climate. The shifting of continents can cause ice ages, shrink the shallow seas
that host much of life on our planet and, by isolating gene pools, promote
evolution. Mantle plumes can trigger huge volcanic eruptions, cooling the
climate within months. Competing convection between the core and mantle can even
change the lengths of days. Even in what has become the environmentally
conscious world of earth science teaching, the next generation of students will
have to be ready to dig deep.

The Core-Mantle Boundary Region

edited by Michael Gurnis and others, American Geophysical Union, Geodynamics
series, volume 28, AGU Washington, $65, ISBN 0875905307.

A formidable array of expert and sometimes controversial essays covering
modern research on the deep Earth and models of mantle convection.

Fault-Related Rocks

edited by Arthur Snoke, Jan Tullis, Victoria Todd, Princeton University
Press, 拢75, ISBN 0691012202.

Some stunning images make this library reference book a superb account of
what happens to solid rocks when they flow or break apart on faults.

Encyclopedia of Geochemistry

edited by Clare Marshall and Rhodes Fairbridge, Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht,
拢280, ISBN 0412755009.

A library-priced reference book, not encyclopedic, but a collection of
succinct chapters on disparate topics, from activation energies to the
geochemistry of zirconium.

Sedimentology and Stratigraphy

by Gary Nichols, Blackwell Science, 拢26.50, ISBN 0632035781.

This year鈥檚 textbook on sedimentary rocks is readable and wide-ranging. But
soon there鈥檒l be a textbook by every sedimentologist in the country.

Geological Maps: An Introduction

(2nd edition) by Alex Maltman, John Wiley and Sons, 拢19.99, ISBN
0471976962.

A welcome reappearance of this highly regarded basic text. Shows how
essentially two-dimensional observations can yield a three dimensional
view鈥攁 key skill.

Low-Grade Metamorphism

by Martin Frey and Doug Robinson, Blackwell, 拢44.50, ISBN
0632047569.

Discover the processes which make muds into slate and how the water that
escapes from black smokers has changed basalts beneath the sea floor.

Historically, these events are common, but this time there was a surprise:
new buildings were more seriously damaged than older ones. The disasters led to
widespread criticism of the local and provincial authorities that had sanctioned
these building projects. Clearly, they would have benefited from an
understanding of how the landscape responds to rainfall and how detritus is
transported.

So it is timely that in the past year some excellent textbooks have appeared
that will help today鈥檚 students to provide planners of the future with better
advice. Traditionally, the study of processes acting within and upon the surface
of the Earth was left to the occupants of geography departments. Students in
earth science departments would confine themselves to the products of these
processes, preserved in sedimentary rocks, which formed a geological record.
This distinction has blurred in recent years with the widespread use of
quantitative methods, such as fluid mechanics. We now know that we need to adopt
a holistic approach when studying the Earth. Philip Allen鈥檚 Earth Surface
Processes is a benchmark textbook for this new generation of students and
university courses and is, quite simply, outstanding.

Although concerned purely with physical processes, Allen breaks down the
traditional boundaries between disciplines. If you want to know how ripples form
on the seashore or how Saharan dust can be blown across the Atlantic, this is
the book for you.

Allen鈥檚 advanced yet accessible treatment contrasts with the approach of
Environmental Geology by Dorothy Merritts and others. Clearly directed at
first-year American college students, it has the glossy and rather frenetic
coverage typical of such books. An overall belief in an integrated approach
shines through, however, and the two books even share a photograph鈥攖hat of
a Jeep trying to outrun the fearsome collapsing volcanic ash clouds from
Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991.

Volcanoes are classic examples of rapid and often catastrophic Earth surface
processes. Glaciers appear altogether more peaceful, yet their landscapes offer
their own hazards, such as the much-publicised j枚kulhlaup, or
outburst flood, from the Vatna ice sheet in Iceland a couple of years ago.
Charting the extent of the ice sheets that have covered parts of the northern
hemisphere many times over the past hundred thousand years or so has been
important for reconstructing past climates. Recent work has demonstrated how ice
ages can initiate and decay over staggeringly short timescales, even within a
human generation or two.

Today鈥檚 earth science students need to be able to read the record of past
glaciations. Glaciers and Glaciations by Doug Benn and Dave Evans is an
excellent account of modern methods of study, and covers recent advances in the
area. Benn and Evans examine the characteristics of modern glacial landscapes
and then consider how to use careful observations to reconstruct those of the
recent geological past. They even show how similar analyses can produce possible
glacial histories on Mars.

For students embarking on their own analyses of past environments on planet
Earth, the book is complemented by a multimedia pack produced by Jane Hart and
Kirk Martinez. Glacial Analysis, an interactive CD-ROM and booklet, is
among the best examples of a teaching aid in this format. Unlike many CD-ROMs,
which merely provide a kind of free-form book, Hart and Martinez鈥檚 disc is truly
interactive: for example, by letting students measure pebble orientations in
virtual glacial tills and plot them to chart the direction and movement of
long-disappeared ice sheets.

Landscape processes also feature in perhaps one of the most eagerly awaited
second edition texts of the year in earth science. The front cover of Don
Turcotte鈥檚 Fractals and Chaos in Geology and Geophysics is adorned with
beautiful branching shapes of river valleys. When it first appeared six years
ago, this book played an important part in promoting the use of fractals in the
earth sciences. These concepts have been used in vast numbers of applications
since then, only some of which are discussed at length here.

One of the biggest areas of expansion has been in quantifying landscape
evolution, especially in river basins. Fractals and geomorphology warrant an
entire chapter in Turcotte鈥檚 book. Committed students of quantitative landscape
description will also be drawn to Fractal River Basins by Ignacio
Rodr铆guez-Iturbe and Andrea Rinaldo. It is a mathematically fascinating
book and presents a convincing case for the self-organised nature of river
basins and related landscapes.

It is not clear, however, what fractal descriptions imply about the actual
processes of erosion, sediment transport and water flow across the landscape.
Indeed, fractal descriptions of landscape do not even warrant a mention in
Allen鈥檚 Earth Surface Processes, apart from an aside noting that the
fractal dimension of landscapes is identical to that of a surface of a bowl of
porridge. Through simple magnitude-frequency analysis, fractals are widely used
in the earth sciences to predict the number and sizes of geological features or
events outside those that are directly observed or recorded. In seismological
studies we can use the number and sizes of small earthquakes to predict the
recurrence of larger, devastating ones.

Curiously, this aspect is not covered in what are otherwise two important
textbooks that have appeared in the past year. Anthony Evans鈥檚 An
Introduction to Economic Geology and Its Environmental Impact is
an interesting departure from the usual coverage of Earth resources. Society now
faces challenges from past exploitation of mineral resources, such as acid mine
drainage, that are just as pressing as the need to find new reserves. This book
is not as ambitious as Turcotte鈥檚 and so the application of self-similar
fractals to mine tonnage and ore bodies which Turcotte covers would be out of
place in an introductory text.

The quantification of fracture patterns and their importance in the continued
exploitation of mature oil and gas fields is a curious omission from the
otherwise excellent fourth edition of Ken Glennie鈥檚 Petroleum Geology of
the North Sea. The North Sea is now probably one of the best-understood
geological regions on the planet鈥攁mazing for an area that is
underwater and was essentially unknown to geologists until 30 years ago. This
eagerly awaited new edition of the oil geologists鈥� bible is essential
reading.

Employment statistics for earth science graduates show that most go into
broadly environmental or engineering jobs, rather than the traditional ones
offered by the oil and gas industries. As the challenges of coping with
environmental hazards, natural and otherwise, become more evident, students will
need more fine texts on surface processes to complement this year鈥檚 excellent
crop.

GIVEN the amount of information that has poured back from the Carl Sagan
Memorial Station鈥攁lias Pathfinder鈥攐n Mars, it seems a little
anachronistic to describe oneself as an earth scientist. We are all planetary
scientists now. So it seems timely to take a spin in space and look at the
technology out there that is pointing back at us earthlings.

In a crowded field of textbooks dealing with images of our planet from space,
Floyd Sabins鈥檚 Remote Sensing(Macmillan, 拢32.95, ISBN 0716724421)
makes a welcome reappearance. Comprehensive, wide-ranging and fun, this book
deals with more than just the basics. Recent advances such as using radar
interferometry to detect tiny ground motions associated with earthquakes are
included, but you鈥檒l also find out how faint camel trails in the Arabian Desert
led to the lost city of Ubar. Sabins鈥檚 book is the first of several excellent
books this year within the realm of earth surface processes.

When it appeared in 1978, Harold Reading鈥檚 Sedimentary Environments:
Processes, Facies and Stratigraphy (Blackwell, 拢34.50, ISBN
0632036273) was the first to relate descriptions of sedimentary successions and
experimental data to systematic reconstructions of past landscapes. There are
now dozens of books in the field, on subjects ranging from deserts, rivers and
deltas to reefs. The new edition of Reading鈥檚 book is a first-rate buy, fully
updated with lots of new references. Although not quite the bible of yesteryear,
it is still the best handbook for reading the rock record. Combine it with a
good physical geography text, such as Fundamentals of the Physical
Environment by David Briggs (Routledge, 拢19.99, ISBN 0415108918), and
you鈥檒l get a superb grounding in environmental processes, ancient and
modern.

Once upon a time, stratigraphers concentrated on charting changes to the
palaeoenvironment at individual sites or rock sections. When exploration
geologists in oil companies started to acquire high-resolution seismic data,
they needed ways of describing sedimentary successions in two or three
dimensions. This led to the development of a range of analytical concepts
collectively called sequence stratigraphy. Ten years ago, when these ideas
landed on a largely unsuspecting academic world, many saw them as an excuse to
dress old ideas in new acronyms. Most working geologists now recognise the
powerful predictive strengths of sequence stratigraphy, and a textbook has been
long overdue. Now, just like buses, two have come along together.

Fortunately, the choice for students is easy. Although well written, Andrew
Miall鈥檚 The Geology of Stratigraphic Sequences (Springer-Verlag,
$49.50, ISBN 3540593489) is unattractive: Springer鈥檚 production style,
which includes reprinting original diagrams from technical memoirs, makes the
book look very stuffy. I can, however, strongly recommend Dominic Emery and
Keith Meyers鈥� Sequence Stratigraphy (Blackwell, 拢29.50, ISBN
0632037067). Originating from a highly acclaimed in-house course run by the
petroleum company BP, this book is hard to fault. What a pity it didn鈥檛 appear
eight years ago when so much misinformed debate roared within the sedimentology
community. This is an outstanding textbook and deserves to become the 鈥淩eading鈥�
of the early 21st century.

As Emery and Meyers take pains to point out, studying sedimentary successions
requires an understanding of more than just muddy slurries and sand grains.
Stratigraphy of almost any hue has always been very much about plant and animal
remains, as well. Reading the fossil record is the theme of Palaeontological
Events, a compilation of papers edited by Carlton Brett and Gordon Baird,
(Columbia University Press, 拢52/$75, ISBN 0231082509). But you
won鈥檛 find distracting stories of doomed dinosaurs here. This book is far more
useful, dealing with blooms of life as well as extinctions鈥攁nd how the
record of life processes can be used to reconstruct ancient environments.

Sojourner, the Martian rover that analysed Barnacle Bill and friends, is
known by its designers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as their 鈥済eologist鈥�.
Its problems in rock identification nicely mirror those of the budding
geologists who study in universities. Students can generally relate to surface
processes because they experience them directly, not least in their
fieldwork.

Internal earth processes, however, that form crystalline rocks are far more
abstract. They are generally well covered in elementary texts, such as the
glossy and attractive Essentials of Geology by Stan Chernicoff and Chip
Fox (Macmillan, 拢17.95, ISBN 1572591099). But dig deeper, and advanced
textbooks generally lose their student readers. With their workings hidden from
view, the processes of the inner Earth urgently need explaining in more
accessible, attractive and student-friendly textbooks. Geologists, including
Sojourner, need petrology when they get into hands-on mode and away from their
satellite or seismic images. Perhaps next year . . .

Fieldwork: A Geologist鈥檚 Memoir of the Kalahari by Christopher
Scholtz, Princeton University Press, 拢19.95/$24.95, ISBN 0 691
01226 1

HALF the excitement of embarking on an earth sciences degree is the
opportunity to do hands-on science. The vast majority of new students relish the
chance to find it all out for themselves鈥攎ake their own observations and
measurements, test their own hypotheses鈥攊n that best of all work
environments, the field. Even those who lack motivation in the classroom often
find new levels of determination when faced with the reality of a particularly
gripping outcrop.

There is a downside to all this delirium. Budding geologists must learn to
put up with harsh conditions during the many field classes that are run in the
vacations outside the summer months. In Britain, they receive precious little
support from their local education authorities, despite losing valuable
opportunities to earn money during holidays and terms with part-time jobs. And
they also have to equip themselves for the field by buying expensive
weatherproof clothing and tools.

All in all, though, the experience of fieldwork is not just enjoyable and an
excellent foundation in scientific experimental design. It is also good for a
student鈥檚 future career. Even if only a very few go on to become professional
geologists, the benefits for students of learning to think on their feet, both
literally and metaphorically, and of operating in harsh conditions while
developing self-motivation and teamwork, make good highlights on CVs. Certainly,
my students fare well in the graduate employment cattle market.

The trouble is that, although many employers seem increasingly to realise the
benefits of a strong field experience, the whole exercise is under more and more
pressure. I鈥檓 sure that this arises largely from a deep misunderstanding of what
fieldwork actually involves. And the misunderstanding also extends deep into the
scientific community鈥攅ven within those disciplines that have, like the
earth sciences, a strong tradition in fieldwork.

What triggers this odd perception? In a word, image. Fieldwork is often
portrayed as an exercise in random data collection鈥攁 chance to potter
about on your own, just looking around. The geological community hasn鈥檛 helped
itself much here: modern role models and good, clear presentations of excellence
in fieldwork are few and far between. Curiously, other sciences have greatly
benefited from fieldwork. Take astronomy, for example. How much of the interest
in this science in the latter part of the 20th century was launched with the
NASA lunar landings, the most expensive fieldwork ever undertaken? Indeed, the
solution to the recent hot potato of life on Mars can only really be addressed
through another batch of fieldwork鈥攐n the Red Planet itself.

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, a new book by Christopher Scholz offers a
number of important insights into earth sciences fieldwork. It is true that
Fieldwork: A Geologist鈥檚 Memoir of the Kalahari hardly touches on
scientific issues as important as the physical and biological evolution of the
Solar System. It is nevertheless a gripping account of a small research
programme directed at understanding how continents rift apart.

Scholz鈥檚 story recounts the activities of an expedition to collect
geophysical data in Botswana. His research brief was to get a handle on
earthquake hazards in and around the Okavango river delta in the Kalahari. So
the book contains two currents: the narrative of the scientific investigative
approach running alongside the human story鈥攖he personal excitement and
frustration of life in the field.

Scholz鈥檚 concurrent adventures make for a thrilling read. Attempted
robberies, arrests, drinking sessions and expeditions to find a decent hamburger
are intertwined with the conditions a geologist needs to receive good signals
with seismometers. Scholz graphically describes the difficulties inherent in
carrying out seismological experiments in hostile terrain, the hassles with
local, petty bureaucracies, the difficulties of working together in teams and
living alongside herds of elephant and rhino. But this is much more than a
Boy鈥檚 Own account of African adventures.

As with most good science, Scholz鈥檚 Okavango project arose by chance. The
United Nations Development Programme runs a project on the Okavango delta, and
its researchers wanted some idea of the earthquake hazard in the area. This
delta, sited in the heart of the Kalahari desert, is a delicately balanced
environment whose rivers are banked by extremely low ridges. If the ridges were
formed by active faults, slip on the faults, manifested as earthquakes, could
disrupt drainage in the region. This would cause massive ecological changes.

The UNDP approached Scholz and asked him to be its local 鈥渆arthquake
consultant鈥�. He, in contrast, was interested in the more general problem of how
faults and earthquakes work, particularly in response to rifting in the
continents.

After a bout of detective work involving global earthquake records and
satellite images, Scholz realised that the Okavango area lay on a possible
continuation of the rift valleys of eastern Africa. If so, the little faults in
the Okavango represented an early stage of rifting, something that is
extraordinarily difficult to observe elsewhere on Earth. The problem for Scholz
lay in testing his ideas鈥攈ence his interest in the project to collect
detailed data on small earthquakes by recording them directly in the Okavango
area. So Scholz鈥檚 expedition was a marriage of convenience, satisfying the
interests of the UNDP in managing the ecology of the Okavango and, at the same
time, allowing him to investigate, as he puts it, 鈥渁 basic scientific
辫谤辞产濒别尘鈥�.

I particularly enjoyed Scholz鈥檚 description of the important early parts of
his scientific expedition, the different motivations for the study and the
groundwork needed when designing the experiment. These are the elements that are
often missing from popular accounts of scientific expeditions. As a consequence,
it is easy to lose sight of the motivations of the scientists themselves once
they become embroiled in the challenges of a particularly exotic location. Or
the technology gets in the way of the story鈥攁n all-too-common
occurrence.

By avoiding these pitfalls, Fieldwork makes an exciting read for
crusty old geologists, students in search of role models and all those wanting
insight into the processes of scientific discovery. And it illustrates why
fieldwork provides such an excellent training environment.

This should have left me feeling optimistic. Here I have a book that I can
recommend to my students as a role model for their own studies. Of course, this
type of expedition is unlike anything they might do themselves while studying,
but there are useful parallels. And I can recommend the book to my friends and
family who think that fieldwork is just a question of getting a nice tan in an
exotic corner of the world.

The problem is that the pressure on scientific fieldwork by the organisations
responsible for funding are very great indeed. Hardly any universities support
the concept of fieldwork, requiring individual departments or, more commonly,
the individual students to fund themselves. It is seen as a old-fashioned,
unnecessary part of modern scientific endeavour, a bit of a luxury.

It may already be too late to convince the sceptics. Academic fieldwork is
being severely penalised even for postgraduates. Britain鈥檚 Natural Environment
Research Council has recently cut its support for fieldwork radically, even
though students going on scientific cruises using the council鈥檚 ships or working
in its laboratories can use these facilities without charge. Ships and
laboratory costs are underwritten yet there is no specific fund for fieldwork.
So I fear that, notwithstanding the wishes of employers and the excellent
general training that fieldwork provides, its days are numbered. Even excellent
books like Scholz鈥檚 may be too late to reverse the tide.

Major publishing houses have not been idle, either. The past year has seen
several new products including Cornelis Klein鈥檚 Mineralogy Tutorials
CD-ROM. Traditional mineralogy textbooks have barely changed in several
decades鈥擪lein鈥檚 own is now, astonishingly, in its 21st edition. Many are
very staid and boring, a failing which may explain why many students prefer
volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts to Miller indices and crystal order.
Although understandable, sacrificing the basics for the glamourous side of a
science is always dangerous. After all, to tell that a meteorite came from Mars,
you need to look at its mineralogy. So any attempt to breathe life into the
tired bones of mineralogy and crystallography is welcome.

Animated, rotating graphics of crystal structures have replaced the dusty old
models made with table-tennis balls and bits of pipe cleaner鈥攁nd not
before time. But mineralogy tutorials need more than graphics to help the user
through the concepts. Like the typical Hollywood movie, Mineralogy
Tutorials has the special effects, but only a flimsy story line.

Meanwhile, how are books faring in the face of the multimedia challenge?
Economic geology can usually hold an audience if the text is well presented.
Many students dream of working in the mineral or oil industries and, even in
recession, a few actually manage it. Anthony Evans鈥檚 compilation,
Introduction to Mineral Exploration, is a very readable account, showing
how exploration must be tailored to the economics of fluctuating world commodity
prices. Reading this will at least show many students why they are unlikely to
get a job in mining at the moment. John Hunt鈥檚 Petroleum Geochemistry and
Geology is rather more ethereal, while still emphasising business values.
In the 17 years since the first edition, the industry has shifted emphasis from
exploring for new oil and gas to enhancing production from well-established
fields. With their intriguing case studies, the two books together should
underpin many a final year course in economic geology.

Three other parts of the earth sciences are important for hydrocarbon
exploration and, coincidentally, all now have accompanying textbooks. Probably
the most influential of these will be the second edition of Robert Sheriff and
Lloyd Geldart鈥檚 Exploration Seismology. On show is the spectacular
three-dimensional imaging of subsurface geology now possible with modern
computer workstations. What a pity that so few universities can afford this
technology. But the average geology student is always more turned on by field
work than computer screens. So George Davis and Stephen Reynolds鈥檚
Structural Geology of Rocks and Regions is bound to be popular. This book
is great fun with lots of human interest and amusing asides.

This year鈥檚 best introductory text in sedimentology, an already very crowded
field, is Donald Prothero and Fred Schwab鈥檚 Sedimentary Geology.
Throughout their thorough coverage of the topic, the authors rightly point out
that a sedimentologist also needs to understand lots of other parts of the earth
sciences to interpret past environments, and to correlate and date particular
events. This multidisciplinary approach is nicely displayed in Andrew Miall鈥檚
opus, The Geology of Fluvial Deposits. Aimed at the top end of the
student and professional market, this is a superb, authoritative book. It shows
just how to unravel the evolution of ancient rivers by linking good descriptions
of modern environments and processes.

There are great pressures for change in university teaching caused by huge
class sizes within a very severe financial straitjacket. Will libraries be
ripped down to make way for a multiplex of computers? CD-ROMs may be glamorous,
but they are a long way from replacing books, at least in teaching earth
science. There are plenty of excellent visual aids around, but very few that
foster the investigative skills that the students will need, and indeed, should
expect, from a science degree. At least until next year鈥�

It鈥檚 tough on the students and worse for the poor old sandstone as all this increased activity puts the sites under pressure. Then there are the fossil-hunters and mineral collectors. Most student parties now ban hammers and collecting, but students and amateur naturalists still need to be more aware of the harm that can be done to the fantastic range of geological sites around the British Isles. So I am glad to see that several books addressing these issues have appeared this year.

The most accessible is a coproduction between the Open University and The Geological Society. Earth Heritage Conservation is an attractive little book that stresses protection methods for sites, while promoting them as an educational resource. As traditional geology becomes more environmentally aware, I hope that students will learn about these self-help conservation issues.

Traditionally our undergraduates take courses in subjects outside their core areas to strengthen basic science and maths. Even when they can grasp the concepts, the general courses rarely seem relevant. For years we have needed a range of basic science texts tailored to geologists, and at last a couple have arrived.

Richard Chapman鈥檚 Physics for Geologists is a splendidly simple and well-focused little book that should do much to encourage students to get into the sometimes opaque worlds of fluid mechanics or radiation. But it is outshone by the masterly Mathematics: A Simple Tool for Geologists by Dave Waltham. We were waving it around our maths department almost as soon as it arrived. The mathematicians look like adopting it as the course book for our students, though it took them a while to realise just how basic the starting points for subsidiary university courses must be.

With a solid background in the basics, most students should be able to move onto the statistical methods propounded by Swan and Sandilands in their Introduction to Geological Data Analysis. This book lies at the other end of the undergraduate scale, as it bridges the gap into research. It deserves to become popular for its clarity and fairly expansive coverage, and is another of this year鈥檚 books that has been integrated directly into our teaching at Leeds.

The other end of the student market is the target audience for New Views on an Old Planet by Jerry van Andel, a chatty account of Earth evolution. The new edition is a complete reworking of the highly regarded first version. Advances in the understanding of long-term environmental change, from the past few ice ages to the early development of life, have made this remake overdue. It deserves to become a classic.

Much of the methodology underlying van Andel鈥檚 book is covered by the subdiscipline of stratigraphy. The nuts and bolts of the subject are the topic of a more traditional, technical textbook, The Key to Earth History. It deals with the analysis of geological history from sedimentary rocks and goes through all the traditional aspects. But the subject has been rejuvenated in the past decade by high-quality seismic data acquired by oil exploration companies. None of this features in the book, so its usefulness is rather limited.

The same flaw mars Tectonics of Sedimentary Basins, an advanced collection of review articles. There are fewer than ten seismic profiles, and most are badly reproduced. It is daft for students in the 1990s to study stratigraphy or tectonics without some of the spectacular seismic images that are now available.

Finally there is Nigel Woodcock鈥檚 excellent Geology and Environment in Britain and Ireland, which is aimed at first-year undergraduates but should be intelligible to sixth-formers too. Teachers will like the book for its clear presentation. In days gone by much of this book鈥檚 subject matter would have lain within an applied or economic geology course but, as Woodcock points out, these old approaches stressed the exploitation of resources and not the consequences of such activities. The book鈥檚 holistic approach is particularly timely. I hope that it will be adopted by schools as well as universities so that students will be attracted by the wide impact that geology has on society. Then we will be able to go a few more years before having to tempt students onto earth sciences courses with offers of free holidays.

After restructuring came accountability, with audits appearing as quickly
as the committees changed their acronyms. First came the research audit.
Now we are in the throes of a teaching audit. Woody Allen鈥檚 adage that 鈥榯hose
that can鈥檛 do, teach. And those that can鈥檛 teach, teach sports鈥� should be
retargeted. Those who can鈥檛 teach, audit. While everyone likes the concept
of quality assurance, in practice the function of university earth science
lecturers has become primarily administration, at the expense of research
and teaching.

Perhaps universities have been pitched into the whirlpool of auditing
late in the day 鈥� certainly, compared with schools, they have. There is
substantial evidence, albeit of the hearsay variety, that research in Britain
has been compromised. The publication lists of the major departments are
rather short, considering the number of international scientists on their
staff. And the output of books is shrinking. There are a few good books
about this year: some ambitiously try to fill unpopular niches and some
big names have reappeared. But only one book on my list originates wholly
from a major British department 鈥� and that is a second edition.

Earth by Frank Press and Raymond Siever has for 20 years been one of
the most popular introductory texts in earth sciences. First published in
the golden days that followed the plate tectonics revolution, it was a cogent
and inspiring, if brashly American book for students, apparently embracing
all of earth science between one set of covers. But the subject moves on,
and now the same authors have brought out a replacement, rather grandly
renamed Understanding Earth. This superbly presented book is less demanding
on the reader and covers far more environmental and cultural ground than
the original. It is a noble attempt to provide a simple commentary for students
who are not primarily earth scientists. But this is also a failing, for
the slick presentation blurs the distinction, clearly made in the writing,
between fact, hypothesis and opinion. There are dangers in making things
too accessible 鈥� this is a theme park of a book.

Two other books seem assured of a wide sale on the strength of the names
of their authors. John Rogers has set himself the target of writing A History
of the Earth. Again, this is clearly aimed at an American audience although,
because of its scope, the book draws on examples worldwide. It makes a good
story, but the presentation and the illustrations are dreadful.

Also disappointing, but for different reasons, is Metamorphic Petrology
by Akiho Miyashiro. His classic text, Metamorphism and Metamorphic Belts,
was published twenty years ago and represented a radical attempt to place
the subject in a plate tectonic context. The new book is clearly presented
as a sequel, although it inevitably contains updated material. The intellectual
lineage can be seen in the brief history of metamorphic petrology with which
it finishes. This is illuminating, but the omissions here betray the weaknesses
of the book: the advances in petrology have not been integrated with the
tectonic ones 鈥� especially the rates of vertical movement in mountain belts.
In this light, the book looks rather staid.

Geochemistry is a topic that has been deeply unattractive to many students
who, for too many years, have either failed to see its relevance or were
alienated by practitioners who seemed intent on playing wizard and withholding
the secret of their art. With a few notable exceptions, undergraduate texts
seemed to obscure rather than reveal the delights of the subject. The past
year saw the publication of an important collection 鈥� Longman鈥檚 Geochemistry
series 鈥� that doubtless sets out to help students.

The introductory volume of the series, Hugh Rollison鈥檚 Using Geochemical
Data: Evaluation, Presentation, Interpretation, is aimed at second-year
undergraduates and covers many of the basics. Although it doesn鈥檛 go far
enough in the current fields 鈥� particularly isotope geochemistry 鈥� it is
an enjoyable read. Most importantly, it is attractive and accessible to
students.

These comments do not apply to its stablemate, Philip Fletcher鈥檚 Chemical
Thermodynamics for Earth 杏吧原创s. Thermodynamics underpins the quantification
of the processes that control chemical changes, and allows geochemists to
extrapolate experimental results and predict the physical conditions under
which rocks formed. The author invites readers to 鈥榙ip in at any selected
point鈥� to sample his book. I did, but came out quickly. The book may he
worthy but will hardly motivate students to understand thermodynamics. It
is an opportunity lost.

The third of the Longman books is altogether different. Stephen and
Vanessa Killops have collaborated to produce An Introduction to Organic
Geochemistry. This excellent book is aimed at explaining a particularly
important group of sedi-ments: hydrocarbon source rocks. The subject has
been a very poor relation of the vast subject of inorganic geochemistry
in the earth sciences, even though the oil industry is the principal employer
of vocationally driven earth science graduates. This state of affairs is
likely to continue, despite the low oil price, so the Killops鈥� book is a
worthwhile addition.

It is a curious coincidence that Blackwell has just published Inorganic
Geochemistry: Applications to Petroleum Geology by Dominic Emery and Andrew
Robinson. This is also a good book, and nicely complements the organic text.
The two work together to give an excellent review of sedimentary geochemistry
as approached by the oil industry.

Apart from oil or mineral exploration, the traditional route for career
geologists was into engineering geology. More stringent planning requirements
and environmental considerations are making this a growth area for employment
for earth science graduates across Europe 鈥� although the effect is less
marked in deregulated, short-term Britain. This year sees the publication
of Fred Bell鈥檚 book, Engineering Geology. Although written for engineers,
much of the content is of interest to many branches of the earth sciences.
The first part of the book contains elementary geological topics but is
presented in a rather dated and prosaic fashion. This is a pity, because
the book will lose many readers before they reach the main course.

My last books on this year鈥檚 list are excellent. The title of 鈥榬emake
of the year鈥� goes to the long-awaited second edition of Geoff Brown and
Alan Mussett鈥檚 The Inaccessible Earth. This book has formed a mainstay of
many undergraduate reading lists for over a decade, providing a commentary
on the Earth鈥檚 internal structure by integrating geophysics and geochemistry.
The new edition places more emphasis on processes and is all the better
for it.

At about the time that The Inaccessible Earth first appeared, Ken Hsu
edited a book called Mountain Building Processes. For this he assembled
a cast of largely alpine geologists who provided an array of loosely linked
subjects. The book became immensely popular and widely read, for the volume
provided insight on research topics, yet was generally quite accessible
for advanced students. This tradition has continued with a superb volume
put together by Paul Hancock. For Continental Deformation he has brought
together 27 authors to contribute an array of review articles that embraces
many areas of structural geology and tectonics. This is a rare example of
structural geologists trying to present a truly useful users鈥� manual for
their subject. The book should motivate more students to take an interest
in bent and broken rocks.

In a year in which few books are likely to become classics, it would
be a pity if the flamboyant but frothy elementary texts from North America
became the staple diet for our students. This year鈥檚 crop contains too many
turgid technical tomes and texts that do not address the needs of modern
earth science courses. There are some gems here. But perhaps it is Continental
Deformation that represents the future, at least for advanced undergraduate
texts. As the administrative load on university lecturers in Britain increases,
few of us may be able to commit time to producing an entire volume, but
we may be able to knock out an occasional chapter. All we need, then, are
some editors with a little sabbatical leave . . .

Rob Butler shuffles paper and lectures in the Department of Earth Sciences
at the University of Leeds.

* * *

Understanding Earth by F. Press and R. Siever, WH Freeman, pp 593, 拢23.95
pbk

A History of the Earth by J. J. W. Rogers, Cambridge, pp 417, 拢50
hbk, 拢22.95

Metamorphic Petrology by A. Miyashiro, UCL Press, pp 416, 拢60
hbk, 拢24.95 pbk

Using Geochemical Data: Evaluation, Presentation, Interpretation by
H. Rollinson, Longman , pp 376, 拢24.99

Chemical Thermodynamics for Earth 杏吧原创s by P. Fletcher, Longman,
pp 448, 拢25.99

An Introduction To Organic Geochemistry by S. D. Killops and V. J. Killops,
Longman Scientific and Technical, pp 280, 拢18.99

Inorganic Geochemistry: Applications to Petroleum Geology by D. Emery
and A. Robinson, Blackwell Scientific, pp 264, 拢24.95

Engineering Geology by F. G. Bell, Blackwell Scientific Publications,
pp 368, 拢24.95

The Inaccessible Earth (second edition) by G. C. Brown and A. E. Mussett,
Chapman and Hall, pp 288, 拢19.99/ $39 pbk

Continental Deformation edited by P. L. Hancock, Pergamon, pp 432, 拢29.50
pbk