ALBERT

Description / Table of Contents: Echinoderms are a vast group of spiny-skinned animals including starfish, brittle-stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, feather stars, sea lilies and sea cucumbers. These relatives of chordates and hemichordates have inhabited the world’s oceans for more than 500 million years. Modern members of the Echinodermata are, with over 7 000 species, an integral part of marine communities from the intertidal to the deep sea. Echinoderms play a major ecological role in marine habitats and are of economic importance in fisheries, aquaculture and biomedicine. The present volume contains the abstracts of lectures and posters presented during the 7th European Conference on Echinoderms (ECE) as well as excursion guides. This year’s conference was held at the northern campus of the Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany, from October 2-9, 2010. More than 100 biologists, palaeontologists and other scientists from 25 countries participated.

Description / Table of Contents: This volume combines original data in various fields from the offshore Levant Basin and adjacent continental slopes and platforms. The first group of papers document the tectonic structures and sedimentological patterns associated with the development of the Levant Basin. They identify the successive rifting events from the Late Palaeozoic to the Early Cretaceous, followed by a moderate tectonic activity. The contribution of external factors like global sea-level and climate changes to the sedimentation processes during the Mid-Cretaceous is discussed in the second set of papers. The final group presents new kinematics and age constraints on the Late Cretaceous to Neogene tectonic phases and discusses the relationship of the structures with the closure of the Neo-Tethys and separation of the Arabia plate. This collection of research papers demonstrates new concepts on the opening and crustal thinning of the Levant Basin and gives updated interpretations of the latter tectonic structures of the Levant.

Description / Table of Contents: The Earth's climate varies through geological time as a result of external, orbital processes, as well as the positions of continents, growth of mountains and the opening and closure of oceanic gateways. Climate modelling suggests that the intensity of the Asian monsoon should correlate, at least in part, with the uplift history of the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalaya, as well as the evolution of gateways and the retreat of shallow seas in Central Asia. Long-term reconstructions of both mountain building and monsoon activity are key to testing the proposed links. This collection of papers presents a series of new studies documenting the variations of the Asian monsoon on orbital and tectonic timescales, together with the impact this has had on environmental conditions. The issue of which proxies are best suited to measuring monsoons is addressed, as is the effect that the monsoon has had on erosion and the formation of the stratigraphic record both on and offshore.

Description / Table of Contents: The discovery of dinosaurs and other large extinct ‘saurians’ - a term under which the Victorians commonly lumped ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, pterosaurs and their kin - makes exciting reading and has caught the attention of palaeontologists, historians of science and the general public alike. The papers in this collection go beyond the familiar tales about famous ‘fossil hunters’ and focus on relatively little-known episodes in the discovery and interpretation (from both a scientific and an artistic point of view) of dinosaurs and other inhabitants of the Mesozoic world. They cover a long time span, from the beginnings of ‘modern’ scientific palaeontology in the 1700s to the present, and deal with many parts of the world, from the Yorkshire coast to Central India, from Bavaria to the Sahara. The characters in these stories include professional palaeontologists and geologists (some of them well-known, others quite obscure), explorers, amateur fossil collectors, and artists, linked together by their interest in Mesozoic creatures.

Description / Table of Contents: This volume honours the career of Brian F. Windley, who has been hugely influential in helping to achieve our current understanding of the evolution of the continental crust, and who has inspired many students and scientists to pursue studies on the evolution of the continents. Brian has studied processes of continental formation and evolution on most continents and of all ages, and has educated and inspired two generations of geologists to undertake careers in studies of continental evolution. The volume is organized into six sections, including: oceanic and island arc systems and continental growth; tectonics of accretionary orogens and continental growth; growth and stabilization of continental crust; collisions and intraplate processes; Precambrian tectonics and the birth of continents; and active tectonics and geomorphology of continental collision and growth zones.

Description / Table of Contents: Onshore fold–thrust belts are commonly perceived as ‘difficult’ places to explore for hydrocarbons and are therefore often avoided. However, these belts host large oil and gas fields and so these barriers to effective exploration mean that substantial unexploited resources may remain. Over time, evaluation techniques have improved. It is possible in certain circumstances to achieve good 3D seismic data. Structural restoration techniques have moved into the 3D domain and increasingly sophisticated palaeo-thermal indicators allow better modelling of burial and uplift evolution of source and reservoirs. Awareness of the influence of pre-thrust structure and stratigraphy and of hybrid thick and thin-skinned deformation styles is augmenting the simplistic geometric models employed in earlier exploration. But progress is a slow, expensive and iterative process. Industry and academia need to collaborate in order to develop and continually improve the necessary understanding of subsurface geometries, reservoir and charge evolution and timing; this publication offers papers on specific techniques, outcrop and field case studies.

Description / Table of Contents: Introduction: Australian geomorphology into the 21st century / Paul Bishop and Brad Pillans / Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 346, 1-6, 1 January 2010, https://doi.org/10.1144/SP346.1 --- A theory (involving tropical cyclones) on the formation of coarse-grained sand beach ridges in NE Australia / Jonathan Nott / Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 346, 7-22, 1 January 2010, https://doi.org/10.1144/SP346.2 --- Sheltered sandy beaches of southwestern Australia / A. Travers, M. J. Eliot, I. G. Eliot and M. Jendrzejczak / Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 346, 23-42, 1 January 2010, https://doi.org/10.1144/SP346.3 --- Are the Murray Canyons offshore southern Australia still active for sediment transport? / S. Schmidt, P. De Deckker, H. Etcheber and S. Caradec / Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 346, 43-55, 1 January 2010, https://doi.org/10.1144/SP346.4 --- East Australian marine abrasion surface / Bruce G. Thom, Jock B. Keene, Peter J. Cowell and Marc Daley / Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 346, 57-69, 1 January 2010, https://doi.org/10.1144/SP346.5 --- Geoarchaeology in Australia: understanding human-environment interactions / Simon J. Holdaway and Patricia C. Fanning / Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 346, 71-85, 1 January 2010, https://doi.org/10.1144/SP346.6 --- Ecogeomorphology in the Australian drylands and the role of biota in mediating the effects of climate change on landscape processes and evolution / David Dunkerley / Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 346, 87-120, 1 January 2010, https://doi.org/10.1144/SP346.7 --- History of Australian aridity: chronology in the evolution of arid landscapes / Toshiyuki Fujioka and John Chappell / Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 346, 121-139, 1 January 2010, https://doi.org/10.1144/SP346.8 --- The Australian desert dunefields: formation and evolution in an old, flat, dry continent / Paul P. Hesse / Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 346, 141-164, 1 January 2010, https://doi.org/10.1144/SP346.9 --- Advances in Quaternary studies in Tasmania / Eric A. Colhoun, Kevin Kiernan, Timothy T. Barrows and Albert Goede / Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 346, 165-183, 1 January 2010, https://doi.org/10.1144/SP346.10 --- ‘Of droughts and flooding rains’: an alluvial loess record from central South Australia spanning the last glacial cycle / David Haberlah, Peter Glasby, Martin A. J. Williams, Steven M. Hill, Frances Williams, Edward J. Rhodes, Victor Gostin, Anthony O'Flaherty and Geraldine E. Jacobsen / Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 346, 185-223, 1 January 2010, https://doi.org/10.1144/SP346.11 --- Eroding Australia: rates and processes from Bega Valley to Arnhem Land / Arjun M. Heimsath, John Chappell and Keith Fifield / Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 346, 225-241, 1 January 2010, https://doi.org/10.1144/SP346.12 --- Tectonic geomorphology of Australia / Mark C. Quigley, Dan Clark and Mike Sandiford / Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 346, 243-265, 1 January 2010, https://doi.org/10.1144/SP346.13 --- Lithology and the evolution of bedrock rivers in post-orogenic settings: constraints from the high-elevation passive continental margin of SE Australia / Paul Bishop and Geoff Goldrick / Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 346, 267-287, 1 January 2010, https://doi.org/10.1144/SP346.14 --- Rethinking eastern Australian caves / R. A. L. Osborne / Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 346, 289-308, 1 January 2010, https://doi.org/10.1144/SP346.15 --- Oxygen-isotope dating the Yilgarn regolith / Allan. R. Chivas and Julius. R. Atlhopheng / Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 346, 309-320, 1 January 2010, https://doi.org/10.1144/SP346.16

Description / Table of Contents: Fold-and-thrust belts occur worldwide, have formed in all eras of geological time, and are widely recognized as the most common mode in which the crust accommodates shortening. Much current research on the structure of fold-and-thrust belts is focused on structural studies of regions or individual structures and on the geometry and evolution of these regions employing kinematic, mechanical and experimental modelling. In keeping with the main trends of current research, this title is devoted to the kinematic evolution and structural styles of a number of fold-and-thrust belts formed from Palaeozoic to Recent times. The papers included in this book cover a broad range of different topics, from modelling approaches to predict internal deformation of single structures, 3D reconstructions to decipher the structural evolution of groups of structures, palaeomagnetic studies of portions of fold-and-thrust belts, geometrical and kinematical aspects of Coulomb thrust wedges and structural analyses of fold-and-thrust belts to unravel their sequence of deformations.

Description / Table of Contents: Frontiers in Geofluids is a collection of invited papers chosen to highlight recent developments in our understanding of geological fluids in different parts of the Earth, and published to mark the first ten years of publication of the journal Geofluids. The scope of the volume ranges from the fundamental properties of fluids and the phase relationships of fluids encountered in nature, to case studies of the role of fluids in natural processes. New developments in analytical and theoretical approaches to understanding fluid compositions, fluid properties, and geological fluid dynamics across a wide range of environments are included. A recurrent theme of research published in Geofluids is the way in which similar approaches can be applied to geological fluids in very different settings and this is reflected in the diverse range of applications of fluid studies that are included here. They include deep groundwater flow, hydrocarbons in faulted sedimentary basins, hydrothermal ores, and multiphase flow in mid-ocean ridge systems. Other topics covered are geothermal waters, crustal metamorphism, and fluids in magmatic systems. The book will be of great interest to researchers and students interested in crustal and mantle fluids of all sorts.

Description / Table of Contents: Companies are increasingly aware of the need to address climate change. However, while many companies are taking action to address climate change, many others are still lagging behind. This report surveys responsible business practices addressing climate change and driving the shift to a low-carbon economy. It summarises policies, regulations and other instruments in support of a low-carbon economy in OECD countries and emerging economies, and analyses corporate responses to these drivers. Using the principles of responsible business conduct identified in the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, this report reviews three key areas of corporate action: accounting for greenhouse gas emissions; achieving emissions reductions; and engaging suppliers, consumers and other stakeholders.