Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Historical Geography, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
The first comprehensive map of any ocean basin-covering the North Atlantic region-was created in the US in the 1950s. Compiled by Bruce C. Heezen and Marie Tharp, researchers at Columbia University's Lamont Geological Observatory, the Heezen-Tharp physiographic map of 1957 was significant in several respects. It defined the large-scale physiological provinces of the seafloor, and highlighted its major physical features (including the Rift Valley of mid-oceanic ridge, which Tharp discovered). Military funding for oceanographic research in the early Cold War made possible extensive sea voyages that provided these Columbia researchers sea-floor depth profiles and other critical information; military secrecy persuaded Heezen and Tharp to adopt the physiographic approach when national security restrictions made new bathymetric maps 'born classified'. But overlooked until now is that the Heezen-Tharp map also deeply depended on extensive support from Bell Labs, then laboring to install the first transatlantic telephone lines. Heezen's hope that the map would support the theory of the expanding earth over the resurrected theory of continental drift did not succeed. But the 1957 North Atlantic Physiographic Chart did reaffirm that representations of the seafloor, mediated by new technologies, fundamentally reflected changing motivations for studying the oceans. ... Read more

Book Description
Glorious panoramic photography reveals the physical legacy of Earth's past and provides a clear and original perspective on Earth as a dynamic planet. In a compelling narrative, Origins places the history of our planet in a contemporary context in which humans, like all living things, must embrace change or die. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Plate Tectonics
This is, without doubt, the best review of plate tectonics yet published.I'm surprised that more has not been popularly written about this subject than has been.

A Unique Approach to Earth Systems Understanding
I have had the priveledge of close association with the author, Ron Redfern, throughout the writing, organization and photographic activities that support this publication. In acareer of geology-based endeavors, I have never enjoyed a more unique, thorough and emminently readable portrayal of the interlocking sciences that result in the Earth's evolutionary history. This is a complex subject. However, the author has made the 700 million year trip a pleasure. The beautiful, panoramic photography, the interweaving of summary-level essays, and meticulously time-based text, lavishly supported by color illustrations, gives the reader a multi-disciplinary view of not only our planet's geologic evolution, but also its close association with meteorological events and the evolution of life. The reader will want to read and re-read this book. A wonderful adventure, every time, with new perspectives of "how things work" discovered on each page.

M.M. Thacker
Geologist

President, the La Mancha Company (consulting)

A paleo-archologist's point of view
One of many subjects treated here is the initial colonization of the New World, which has been the subject of often vitriolic scholarly debate for the past two decades. In this book Ron Redfern has managed to distill the essence of that debate in a highly readable fashion and shows how new data has dramatically altered our previous reconstructions of the timing and modes of arrival and dispersal of the first Americans. As always, the environment remains the dynamic stage upon which the prehistoric actors of antiquity operated-a theme which permeates the entire volume.
Prof. James M. Adovasio: Exec.Director: Mercyhurst Archeological Institute: Erie, PN

The Value of Redfern's Origins
I write on behalf of the curator of our C. Warren Irvin Jr Collection of Charles Darwin:
"The book has two sections which are interposed: 1. the text is exceptionally well done, and the glossary is extremely valuable for those not completely famniliar with geology and the formation of continents, etc. 2. the photography is the best that I (the curator) has ever seen in a book of this type. It in itself is worth the price of the volume.Anyone who reads this book will come awayenlightened and will enjoy thinking and reviewing in his mind both words and pictures." ... Read more

Book Description
The integrated approach applied in the study provides a reassessment of the stratigraphy previously established for the 18 holes that have been re-examined. The authors set out the current understanding of Southern Ocean biochronology and give a synthesis of biostratigraphical and polarity data from previous work.The volume will be a valuable reference for interpreting the palaeoceanography, climatic history and tectonic evolution of the Southern Ocean. It also provides a framework for dating oceanography and sedimentary events that are used as proxies for interpreting the glacial history of Antarctica. Paperback ... Read more

Book Description
Focuses on ice sheet/ocean interactions, on oceanic climate change during the last deglaciation period and on the high temporal resolution that can be obtained from sediment records at continental margin sites. Includes papers from the northeastern North American continental margin, East Greenland margin, the margins of northwest Europe, the northwest European Arctic and the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans. Many of the papers present high-resolution stratigraphic data, supported by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dates, which demonstrate the advantages of continental margin records in resolving the palaeoceanography of the North Atlantic Ocean and in regional reconstructions of climate change. ... Read more

Book Description
This book is devoted to the quantitative physical modeling ofsubduction and subduction-related processes. It presents a coherentdescription of the modeling method (including similarity criteria, anda novel applied experimental technique), results from modelexperiments, theoretical analysis of results on the basis of continuummechanics, and their geodynamic interpretation. Subduction is modeledin general as well as applied to particular regions using both 2-D and3-D approaches, with both slab-push and slab-pull driving forces. Themodeling covers all stages from subduction initiation to `death',different regimes of subduction producing back arc extension andcompression, blocking of subduction and jumps of subduction zone,arc-continent collision and continental subduction.
This work is for geologists and geophysicists interested ingeodynamics of the convergent plate boundaries and in mechanics of thelithosphere.
... Read more

Book Description
The majority of research presented in this volume arises from the Land-Ocean Evolution Perspecitve Study (LOEPS), which was one component of the Land-Ocean Interaction Study (LOIS - funded by the Natural Environment Research Council).The main aim of LOEPS was to describe the evolution of coastal systems from the Holocene to the Present, in response to changes in relative sea level and the impact of human activities.A key element in the success of LOEPS has been the integration and interaction between the various elements of the research programme. The papers published here reflect this integration rather than summarizing the results of individual research projects or the achievement of a single LOEPS objective.

The contributions fall into four sections: techniques; Humber catchment; other areas within the studied region; regional scale analysis. ... Read more

Book Description
Over the last 25 years considerable information on the geomorphological evolution of the world's largest coral reef system, the Great Barrier Reef, has become available. This book reviews the history of geomorphological studies of the Great Barrier Reef and assesses the influences of sea-level change and oceanographic processes on the development of reefs over the last 10,000 years. It presents analyses of recently attained data from the Great Barrier Reef and reconstructions of the sequence of events which have led to its current geomorphology. The authors emphasise the importance of the geomorphological time span and its applications for present management applications. This is a valuable reference for academic researchers in geomorphology and oceanography, and will also appeal to graduate students in related fields. ... Read more

Book Description
The Red Sea is an important geologic phenomenon because it affords researchers the unique opportunity to witness an ocean in the process of being born.The continental crust has broken along a complex jumble of faults and is slowly spreading apart and, with further rifting, this infant ocean will evolve into a younger version of the Atlantic.The author of this work has studied extensively the patterns produced by processes taking place in the Red Sea basin and on the adjacent continental masses, patterns that can be used to interpret older, larger, and more complex geologic features.His book describes the tectonics, structure, volcanic history, geomorphology, and economic aspects (potential for petroleum and heavy metals) of the area.This book will be of interest to students and researchers of geology, paleontology, and oceanography. ... Read more