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Author: Lijun Liu
Publisher: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing
ISBN: 9783838380803
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
How the planet Earth evolves to its present form and how the interior of Earth affects its surface are still open questions. The main difficulty in probing the answer is the incomplete knowledge of Earth s internal structures, especially at the ancient geological past. This book introduces a novel approach to reproduce the evolving interior of Earth, using a technique widely adopted in weather prediction. An inverse model based on this technique can crank the time machine backward, and reveal the Earth s structure in the past. An example is the reconstruction of the so called Farallon plate (an oceanic plate that has almost entirely recycled into the interior of Earth) subducting beneath North America since the Cretaceous time when dinosaurs still roamed our planet. The inverse calculation indicates that this process strongly affected the surface evolution of North America, including formation of both its enigmatic inland sea once flooding half of the continent and the peculiar geology such as the Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau.
Author: Lijun Liu
Publisher: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing
ISBN: 9783838380803
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Get Book Here
Book Description
How the planet Earth evolves to its present form and how the interior of Earth affects its surface are still open questions. The main difficulty in probing the answer is the incomplete knowledge of Earth s internal structures, especially at the ancient geological past. This book introduces a novel approach to reproduce the evolving interior of Earth, using a technique widely adopted in weather prediction. An inverse model based on this technique can crank the time machine backward, and reveal the Earth s structure in the past. An example is the reconstruction of the so called Farallon plate (an oceanic plate that has almost entirely recycled into the interior of Earth) subducting beneath North America since the Cretaceous time when dinosaurs still roamed our planet. The inverse calculation indicates that this process strongly affected the surface evolution of North America, including formation of both its enigmatic inland sea once flooding half of the continent and the peculiar geology such as the Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau.
Author: Kristen St. John
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119544122
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 560
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Book Description
Reconstructing Earth’s Climate History There has never been a more critical time for students to understand the record of Earth’s climate history, as well as the relevance of that history to understanding Earth’s present and likely future climate. There also has never been a more critical time for students, as well as the public-at-large, to understand how we know, as much as what we know, in science. This book addresses these needs by placing you, the student, at the center of learning. In this book, you will actively use inquiry-based explorations of authentic scientific data to develop skills that are essential in all disciplines: making observations, developing and testing hypotheses, reaching conclusions based on the available data, recognizing and acknowledging uncertainty in scientific data and scientific conclusions, and communicating your results to others. The context for understanding global climate change today lies in the records of Earth’s past, as preserved in archives such as sediments and sedimentary rocks on land and on the seafloor, as well as glacial ice, corals, speleothems, and tree rings. These archives have been studied for decades by geoscientists and paleoclimatologists. Much like detectives, these researchers work to reconstruct what happened in the past, as well as when and how it happened, based on the often-incomplete and indirect records of those events preserved in these archives. This book uses guided-inquiry to build your knowledge of foundational concepts needed to interpret such archives. Foundational concepts include: interpreting the environmental meaning of sediment composition, determining ages of geologic materials and events (supported by a new section on radiometric dating), and understanding the role of CO2 in Earth’s climate system, among others. Next, this book provides the opportunity for you to apply your foundational knowledge to a collection of paleoclimate case studies. The case studies consider: long-term climate trends, climate cycles, major and/or abrupt episodes of global climate change, and polar paleoclimates. New sections on sea level change in the past and future, climate change and life, and climate change and civilization expand the book’s examination of the causes and effects of Earth’s climate history. In using this book, we hope you gain new knowledge, new skills, and greater confidence in making sense of the causes and consequences of climate change. Our goal is that science becomes more accessible to you. Enjoy the challenge and the reward of working with scientific data and results! Reconstructing Earth’s Climate History, Second Edition, is an essential purchase for geoscience students at a variety of levels studying paleoclimatology, paleoceanography, oceanography, historical geology, global change, Quaternary science and Earth-system science.
Author: Braden Allenby
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1597266205
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
The Earth's biological, chemical, and physical systems are increasingly shaped by the activities of one species-ours. In our decisions about everything from manufacturing technologies to restaurant menus, the health of the planet has become a product of human choice. Environmentalism, however, has largely failed to adapt to this new reality. Reconstructing Earth offers seven essays that explore ways of developing a new, more sophisticated approach to the environment that replaces the fantasy of recovering pristine landscapes with a more grounded viewpoint that can foster a better relationship between humans and the planet. Braden Allenby, a lawyer with degrees in both engineering and environmental studies, explains the importance of technological choice, and how that factor is far more significant in shaping our environment (in ways both desirable and not) than environmental controls. Drawing on his varied background and experience in both academia and the corporate world, he describes the emerging field of "earth systems engineering and management," which offers an integrated approach to understanding and managing complex human/natural systems that can serve as a basis for crafting better, more lasting solutions to widespread environmental problems. Reconstructing Earth not only critiques dysfunctional elements of current environmentalism but establishes a foundation for future environmental management and progress, one built on an understanding of technological evolution and the cultural systems that support modern technologies. Taken together, the essays offer an important means of developing an environmentalism that is robust and realistic enough to address the urgent realities of our planet. Reconstructing Earth is a thought-provoking new work for anyone concerned with the past or future of environmental thought, including students and teachers of environmental studies, environmental policy, technology policy, technological evolution, or sustainability.
Author: Martin J. S. Rudwick
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226731146
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 733
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Book Description
In 1650, Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh joined the long-running theological debate on the age of the earth by famously announcing that creation had occurred on October 23, 4004 B.C. Although widely challenged during the Enlightenment, this belief in a six-thousand-year-old planet was only laid to rest during a revolution of discovery in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In this relatively brief period, geologists reconstructed the immensely long history of the earth-and the relatively recent arrival of human life. Highlighting a discovery that radically altered existing perceptions of a human's place in the universe as much as the theories of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud did, Bursting the Limits of Time is a herculean effort by one of the world's foremost experts on the history of geology and paleontology to sketch this historicization of the natural world in the age of revolution. Addressing this intellectual revolution for the first time, Rudwick examines the ideas and practices of earth scientists throughout the Western world to show how the story of what we now call "deep time" was pieced together. He explores who was responsible for the discovery of the earth's history, refutes the concept of a rift between science and religion in dating the earth, and details how the study of the history of the earth helped define a new branch of science called geology. Rooting his analysis in a detailed study of primary sources, Rudwick emphasizes the lasting importance of field- and museum-based research of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Bursting the Limits of Time, the culmination of more than three decades of research, is the first detailed account of this monumental phase in the history of science.
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309209196
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 153
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Book Description
There is little dispute within the scientific community that humans are changing Earth's climate on a decadal to century time-scale. By the end of this century, without a reduction in emissions, atmospheric CO2 is projected to increase to levels that Earth has not experienced for more than 30 million years. As greenhouse gas emissions propel Earth toward a warmer climate state, an improved understanding of climate dynamics in warm environments is needed to inform public policy decisions. In Understanding Earth's Deep Past, the National Research Council reports that rocks and sediments that are millions of years old hold clues to how the Earth's future climate would respond in an environment with high levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Understanding Earth's Deep Past provides an assessment of both the demonstrated and underdeveloped potential of the deep-time geologic record to inform us about the dynamics of the global climate system. The report describes past climate changes, and discusses potential impacts of high levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases on regional climates, water resources, marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and the cycling of life-sustaining elements. While revealing gaps in scientific knowledge of past climate states, the report highlights a range of high priority research issues with potential for major advances in the scientific understanding of climate processes. This proposed integrated, deep-time climate research program would study how climate responded over Earth's different climate states, examine how climate responds to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and clarify the processes that lead to anomalously warm polar and tropical regions and the impact on marine and terrestrial life. In addition to outlining a research agenda, Understanding Earth's Deep Past proposes an implementation strategy that will be an invaluable resource to decision-makers in the field, as well as the research community, advocacy organizations, government agencies, and college professors and students.
Author: Martin J. S. Rudwick
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022642197X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 371
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Book Description
Mammoths and dinosaurs, tropical forests in northern Europe and North America, worldwide ice ages, continents colliding and splitting apart, comets and asteroids crashing catastrophically onto the Earth - these are just some of the surprising features of the eventful history of our planet, stretched out over several billion years. But how was it all discovered, how was the evidence for the Earth’s long history collected and interpreted, and what sorts of people put together this reconstruction of a deep past that no human beings could ever have witnessed? In Earth’s Deep History, Martin J. S. Rudwick tells the gripping story of the gradual realization that the Earth’s history has not only been unimaginably long but also astonishingly eventful in utterly unexpected ways. Rudwick, the world’s premier historian of the Earth sciences, is the first to make the story of the discovery of the Earth’s deep history attractively accessible to readers without prior knowledge of either the history or the science, and in so doing he reveals why it matters to us today.
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309148383
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 128
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Book Description
The hominin fossil record documents a history of critical evolutionary events that have ultimately shaped and defined what it means to be human, including the origins of bipedalism; the emergence of our genus Homo; the first use of stone tools; increases in brain size; and the emergence of Homo sapiens, tools, and culture. The Earth's geological record suggests that some evolutionary events were coincident with substantial changes in African and Eurasian climate, raising the possibility that critical junctures in human evolution and behavioral development may have been affected by the environmental characteristics of the areas where hominins evolved. Understanding Climate's Change on Human Evolution explores the opportunities of using scientific research to improve our understanding of how climate may have helped shape our species. Improved climate records for specific regions will be required before it is possible to evaluate how critical resources for hominins, especially water and vegetation, would have been distributed on the landscape during key intervals of hominin history. Existing records contain substantial temporal gaps. The book's initiatives are presented in two major research themes: first, determining the impacts of climate change and climate variability on human evolution and dispersal; and second, integrating climate modeling, environmental records, and biotic responses. Understanding Climate's Change on Human Evolution suggests a new scientific program for international climate and human evolution studies that involve an exploration initiative to locate new fossil sites and to broaden the geographic and temporal sampling of the fossil and archeological record; a comprehensive and integrative scientific drilling program in lakes, lake bed outcrops, and ocean basins surrounding the regions where hominins evolved and a major investment in climate modeling experiments for key time intervals and regions that are critical to understanding human evolution.
Author: J. William Schopf
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691237573
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 404
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Book Description
One of the greatest mysteries in reconstructing the history of life on Earth has been the apparent absence of fossils dating back more than 550 million years. We have long known that fossils of sophisticated marine life-forms existed at the dawn of the Cambrian Period, but until recently scientists had found no traces of Precambrian fossils. The quest to find such traces began in earnest in the mid-1960s and culminated in one dramatic moment in 1993 when William Schopf identified fossilized microorganisms three and a half billion years old. This startling find opened up a vast period of time--some eighty-five percent of Earth's history--to new research and new ideas about life's beginnings. In this book, William Schopf, a pioneer of modern paleobiology, tells for the first time the exciting and fascinating story of the origins and earliest evolution of life and how that story has been unearthed. Gracefully blending his personal story of discovery with the basics needed to understand the astonishing science he describes, Schopf has produced an introduction to paleobiology for the interested reader as well as a primer for beginning students in the field. He considers such questions as how did primitive bacteria, pond scum, evolve into the complex life-forms found at the beginning of the Cambrian Period? How do scientists identify ancient microbes and what do these tiny creatures tell us about the environment of the early Earth? (And, in a related chapter, Schopf discusses his role in the controversy that swirls around recent claims of fossils in the famed meteorite from Mars.) Like all great teachers, Schopf teaches the non-specialist enough about his subject along the way that we can easily follow his descriptions of the geology, biology, and chemistry behind these discoveries. Anyone interested in the intriguing questions of the origins of life on Earth and how those origins have been discovered will find this story the best place to start.
Author: Joseph Barrell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Climatology
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
Author: Victor Melezhik
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642296696
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 521
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Book Description
Earth’s present-day environments are the outcome of a 4.5 billion year period of evolution reflecting the interaction of global-scale geological and biological processes. Punctuating that evolution were several extraordinary events and episodes that perturbed the entire Earth system and led to the creation of new environmental conditions, sometimes even to fundamental changes in how planet Earth operated. Volume 3: Global Events and the Fennoscandian Arctic Russia - Drilling Earth Project represents another kind of illustrated journey through the early Palaeoproterozoic, provided by syntheses, reviews and summaries of the current state of our understanding of a series of global events that resulted in a fundamental change of the Earth System from an anoxic to an oxic state. The book discusses traces of life, possible causes for the Huronian-age glaciations, addresses radical changes in carbon, sulphur and phosphorus cycles during the Palaeoproterozoic, and provides a comprehensive description and a rich photo-documentation of the early Palaeoproterozoic supergiant, petrified oil-field. Terrestrial environments are characterised through a critical review of available data on weathered and calichified surfaces and travertine deposits. Potential implementation of Ca, Mg, Sr, Fe, Mo, U and Re-Os isotope systems for deciphering Palaeoproterozoic seawater chemistry and a change in the redox-state of water and sedimentary columns are discussed. The volume considers in detail the definition of the oxic atmosphere, possible causes for the oxygen rise, and considers the oxidation of terrestrial environment not as a single event, but a slow-motion process lasting over hundreds of millions of years. Finally, the book provides a roadmap as to how the FAR-DEEP cores may facilitate future interesting science and provide a new foundation for education in earth-science community. Welcome to the illustrative journey through one of the most exciting periods of planet Earth!
