Chapter 1 introduces common rock-forming minerals for igneous and metamorphic rocks. These are presented by mineral group, the optical properties used to recognize each mineral in thin-section are described, and each mineral’s distinctive characteristics and paragenesis is summarized. Color images show typical occurrence and textures with scale. Additional information on solid-solution and polymorphism is provided, as are mineral applications using imaging techniques, barometry, thermometry, and geochronology.

This chapter looks at the history of climate change, the failure to act, systemic thinking and truth.

The aim of this chapter is the classification of the various types of strike-slip faults and their structural architecture. In order to understand structural styles of transform margins, continental strike-slip fault zones, and pull-apart basins, transform margin precursors represented by continental transforms and continent–ocean transforms are discussed, together with their tectonic development histories, controlling dynamics, and resultant structural architecture. The discussion also includes ridge transform faults and associated oceanic fracture zones. Focus is also given to the structural architecture of the oceanic side of the continental–oceanic transform fault zone, its development history, its controlling dynamics, and the way they affect the evolution of the adjacent continental side, which subsequently evolves into the future transform margin.

People often assume that to give ourselves a fighting chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change, we need either inspired political leadership, or a moral revolution in society. Both would be nice to have, but there are more plausible ways to make faster progress. They involve thinking differently. We need science that gives us risk assessment instead of prediction; economics that understands change instead of assuming stability; and diplomacy that focusses on international collaboration instead of unilateral national action.

Every day, millions of weather measurements are made by people and automated sensors across the globe, on land, over the oceans, in the upper reaches of the atmosphere and from space, providing the raw data essential to supercomputer-based weather forecasting models that are vital to modern economies. This chapter provides an introduction to making weather observations, for all levels of ability and motivation, from weather enthusiasts to professional users. In doing so, the history of early meteorological instruments and observers is covered, together with details of many of the locations around the world where continuous weather and climate observations have been made for well over 100 years.

In this chapter we provide an overview of data modeling and describe the formulation of probabilistic models. We introduce random variables, their probability distributions, associated probability densities, examples of common densities, and the fundamental theorem of simulation to draw samples from discrete or continuous probability distributions. We then present the mathematical machinery required in describing and handling probabilistic models, including models with complex variable dependencies. In doing so, we introduce the concepts of joint, conditional, and marginal probability distributions, marginalization, and ancestral sampling.

Discovery of the significance of fluvial megafans came about in the mid to late twentieth century. We suggest reasons why appreciation of their existence came late in the history of Earth science, even after the advent of space-based observation of planetary landscapes. The reasons are partly cultural: megafans are uncommon in the historic cradles of modern geology (Europe, North America). Reasons are also partly theoretical: rivers have been conceptualised chiefly as sediment bypass systems terminating in deltas, rather than as aggradational systems in their own right. Reasons are also perceptual: just as the megaflood origin of channeled scablands was held in disbelief, the inordinate size of megafans has stood in the way of accepting (i) the sheer magnitude of their unit-size and also (ii) their existence as active systems in modern landscapes, rather than just as stratigraphic features in the rock record. Post-1990, scientific activity around megafans accelerated and involved global mapping, classification, and regional investigations into patterns and processes. An overview of this take-off period is provided as a partial introduction to the remaining 17 chapters of this book, which are briefly outlined.

The historical development of statistics and artificial intelligence (AI) is outlined, with machine learning (ML) emerging as the dominant branch of AI. Data science is viewed as being composed of a yin part (ML) and a yang part (statistics), and environmental data science is the intersection between data science and environmental science. Supervised learning and unsupervised learning are compared. Basic concepts of underfitting/overfitting and the curse of dimensionality are introduced.

Desert sand dunes form part of self-organized complex systems of aeolian bedforms that comprise sand seas and dune fields. They form part of local to regional-scale sand transport systems in which sand is moved by the wind from source zones to depositional sinks via transport pathways. The state of these systems can be evaluated in terms of sediment supply, availability, and mobility, which in turn are controlled by changes in climate and sea level on a range of spatial and temporal scales.

The integrated aspects of volcanic and plutonic magmatic systems are rarely exposed, yet this connection is fundamentally important to understand the evolution of magma, which is important, in and of itself, to understanding planetary evolution itself. Magmatic systems beneath major volcanic centers, including the ocean ridges, are an interconnected plexus of sills and conduits. Beneath Hawaii the underlying mush column extends through the entire lithosphere, whereas beneath ocean ridges the mush column is much less vertically extensive, yet they function in very similar ways in spawning a steady flux of basaltic magma. The Ferrar magmatic system exposed in the McMurdo Dry Valleys reveals critical connections at a high level in the crust, demonstrating the operation of a magmatic mush column.

Transformation of the Earth’s social and environmental systems is happening at an incredible pace. The global population has more than doubled over the last five decades, while food and water consumption has tripled and fossil-fuel use quadrupled. Attendant benefits such as longer lifespans and economic growth are increasingly joined by corresponding drawbacks, including mounting socioeconomic inequality, environmental degradation, and climate change. Over the past half-century, interregional differences in population growth rates, unprecedented urbanization, and international migration have led to profound shifts in the spatial distribution of the global population. Economic changes have been dramatic as well. The global per-capita gross domestic product doubled while economic disparities grew in many regions (Rosa et al. 2010).

This chapter first reviews the linear first-order non-homogeneous ordinary differential equation. Introduction to statistics and stochastic processes follows. Afterward, it explains the stochastic fluid continuum concept, associated control volume, and spatial- and ensemble-representative control volume concepts. It then uses the well-known solute concentration definition as an example to elucidate the volume- and spatial-, ensemble-average, and ergodicity concepts. This chapter is to provide basic mathematics and statistics knowledge necessary to comprehend the themes of this book. Besides, this chapter’s home works demonstrate the power of the widely available Microsoft Excel for scientific investigations.

Why do we want to transition all of our energy to clean, renewable energy? Why don’t we just continue burning fossil fuels until they run out, which may be in 50 to 150 years? For three major reasons. Namely, fossil fuels today cause massive air pollution health damage, climate damage, and risks to our energy security. These three problems require immediate and drastic solutions. The longer we wait to solve these problems, the more the accumulated damage. This chapter examines each problem, in turn.

This chapter examines the ten mega-threats, how they link and why they must be solved together; why the solutions must occur at both global and personal levels; and the importance of the individual in saving humankind.

Chapter 1 offers a historical examination of the causes and discovery of global heating and the development of the scientific consensus that it is human-caused and can be curtailed only by cutting greenhouse gas emissions and describes how those developments nonetheless failed to lead to extensive action.

Resource extraction has grown to global significance as part of a particular version of industrial modernity. This modernity emerged with the industrial revolution, accelerated dramatically during the twentieth century, and is now changing rapidly. The fossil fuel-driven world as we know it is questioned and in many parts of the world already taking a downturn. Resource extraction modernity came with a particular kind of societies, based on values linked to gender-, ethnic- and social hierarchy and with largely unsustainable practices. As this modernity is challenged, political and cultural tensions have grown around extractive industries that go far beyond those we saw in the past captured in concepts such as preservation and conservation. To make sense of these comprehensive changes the chapter unites two key concepts: the Anthropocene and the Planetary Mine that together shape the new extractivist paradigm. The Anthropocene speaks to the profound geo-anthropological transformation of the human-earth relationship. The Planetary Mine brings out the interconnected global character of contemporary resource extractivism of which Arctic mining is a significant part.