Stratigraphy: a Modern Synthesis

A Comprehensive review of modern stratigraphic methods. The stratigraphic record is the major repository of information about the geological history of Earth, a record stretching back for nearly 4 billion years. Stratigraphic studies fill out our planet's plate-tectonic history with the details of paleogeography, past climates, and the record of evolution, and stratigraphy is at the heart of the effort to find and exploit fossil fuel resources. Modern stratigraphic methods are now able to provide insights into past geological events and processes on time scales with unprecedented accuracy and precision, and have added much to our understanding of global tectonic and climatic processes. It has taken 200 years and a modern revolution to bring all the necessary developments together to create the modern, dynamic science that this book sets out to describe. Stratigraphy now consists of a suite of integrated concepts and methods, several of which have considerable predictive and interpretive power. The new, integrated, dynamic science that Stratigraphy has become is now inseparable from what were its component parts, including sedimentology, chronostratigraphy, and the broader aspects of basin analysis.

“"Miall (Univ. of Toronto, Canada) ranks among the most influential of modern stratigraphers, and in the present volume he provides a complete summation of all the advances in the science up to the present day. ... Miall finishes with an in-depth chapter on the current status of the measurement of geologic time and future potential in the field. An extensive list of references follows each chapter. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers/faculty, and professionals/practitioners." (C. W. Dimmick, Choice, Vol. 53 (12), September, 2016)”

Andrew Miall has been Professor of Geology at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Toronto, since 1979, where his focus is teaching and research on the stratigraphy and sedimentology of sedimentary basins. His particular interest is in sequence stratigraphy, and in the sedimentology of nonmarine sandstones, and their characteristics as reservoir rocks for non-renewable resources. He is the inaugural holder of the Gordon Stollery Chair in Basin Analysis and Petroleum Geology, which was founded in 2001. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1995. Andrew Miall was Vice President of the Academy of Science of the Royal Society of Canada from 2005 to 2007 and President of the Academy from 2007-2009. From 2000-2004 Andrew Miall served as Canada's representative to the NATO Science and the Environment Program's "Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society", during which time he assisted in the organization of several international workshops dealing with natural hazards. In 2010-2011 he served on expert panels struck by the Government of Canada and the Alberta Government to examine the environmental management of the Alberta Oil Sands. Miall has been the author of five research-level technical books and the editor of five special research collections. In 2007 he published "Canada Rocks", co-authored with Nick Eyles.

This book incorporates updated material on sequence stratigraphy, reflection-seismic methods, chronostratigraphy, and new concepts regarding the representation of time in the sedimentary record. It also includes a summary history of the development of ideas, concepts and methods leading to the modern stratigraphic synthesis, and features a comprehensive stratigraphic-sedimentologic database. Lastly, facies analysis and facies models are described in detail.

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