ALBERT

Description: The theme of this volume was conceived during discussions between the editors and many colleagues, particularly Ian Skilling, Magnus Gudmundsson, Virginia Gulick and Sveinn Jacobsson, in response to a burgeoning growth of interest in volcano-ice systems by geologists working on terrestrial and putative martian examples. Both communities of geologists have been travelling essentially parallel paths in pursuit of their science, but using very different tools: principally remote sensing (satellite data) for Mars; mainly outcrop geology for Earth studies. At present, there are no publications that span the divide that artificially exists between the terrestrial and martian investigations, and, thus, the concept for this volume was borne. Isolated papers have addressed volcano-ice topics but this is the first attempt to assemble a thematic group of contributions addressing the diverse range of interactions known or thought to occur on both planets. The broad focus of this volume is the interaction between magmas and cryospheres, whether on Earth or Mars. On Earth, snow and ice are found in extensive polar ice caps and on the summits of mountains even down to tropical latitudes, and ice sheets were much more widespread in the geological past. The exploration of Mars, by satellite and instrumental lander, has also revealed abundant examples of water and ice: in polar ice caps today and formerly elsewhere on the surface, in the crust and in the megaregolith, and the planet may even have sustained frozen oceans early in its history. Very different eruptive environments are implied, however, with Mars experiencing ... This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract.