Earth Sciences

Canada's diverse landscape speaks to its fascinating geological history, from towering peaks to Prairie plains, from fertile farmlands of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Lowlands to rugged cliffs of the Atlantic shore. However, the modern landscape is just the latest episode in an epic story spanning more than 4 billion years. Four Billion Years and Counting unveils the geological history of Canada and makes connections between geology and social issues such as climate change, hazards such as landslides and earthquakes, and other environmental factors. The text features contributions from some 100 specialists, and is richly illustrated with over 500 colour photographs and diagrams. Four Billion Years and Counting is a fascinating exploration of Canada's geology for those who are intrigued by the landscape and the vital connection between ourselves and what lies beneath our feet.

DEEP LEARNING FOR THE EARTH SCIENCES Explore this insightful treatment of deep learning in the field of earth sciences, from four leading voices Deep learning is a fundamental technique in modern Artificial Intelligence and is being applied to disciplines across the scientific spectrum; earth science is no exception. Yet, the link between deep learning and Earth sciences has only recently entered academic curricula and thus has not yet proliferated. Deep Learning for the Earth Sciences delivers a unique perspective and treatment of the concepts, skills, and practices necessary to quickly become familiar with the application of deep learning techniques to the Earth sciences. The book prepares readers to be ready to use the technologies and principles described in their own research. The distinguished editors have also included resources that explain and provide new ideas and recommendations for new research especially useful to those involved in advanced research education or those seeking PhD thesis orientations. Readers will also benefit from the inclusion of: An introduction to deep learning for classification purposes, including advances in image segmentation and encoding priors, anomaly detection and target detection, and domain adaptation An exploration of learning representations and unsupervised deep learning, including deep learning image fusion, image retrieval, and matching and co-registration Practical discussions of regression, fitting, parameter retrieval, forecasting and interpolation An examination of physics-aware deep learning models, including emulation of complex codes and model parametrizations Perfect for PhD students and researchers in the fields of geosciences, image processing, remote sensing, electrical engineering and computer science, and machine learning, Deep Learning for the Earth Sciences will also earn a place in the libraries of machine learning and pattern recognition researchers, engineers, and scientists.

Modeling Uncertainty in the Earth Sciences highlights the various issues, techniques and practical modeling tools available for modeling the uncertainty of complex Earth systems and the impact that it has on practical situations. The aim of the book is to provide an introductory overview which covers a broad range of tried-and-tested tools. Descriptions of concepts, philosophies, challenges, methodologies and workflows give the reader an understanding of the best way to make decisions under uncertainty for Earth Science problems. The book covers key issues such as: Spatial and time aspect; large complexity and dimensionality; computation power; costs of 'engineering' the Earth; uncertainty in the modeling and decision process. Focusing on reliable and practical methods this book provides an invaluable primer for the complex area of decision making with uncertainty in the Earth Sciences.

This handbook provides a carefully researched, compact source of key earth science information and data, logically sorted by subject matter, and then cross-referenced. It presents earth science and environmental science as closely intertwined and includes tables of the global distributions of fossil fuels.

This book provides an essential appraisal of the recent advances in technologies, mathematical models and computational software used by those working with geodetic data. It explains the latest methods in processing and analyzing geodetic time series data from various space missions (i.e. GNSS, GRACE) and other technologies (i.e. tide gauges), using the most recent mathematical models. The book provides practical examples of how to apply these models to estimate seal level rise as well as rapid and evolving land motion changes due to gravity (ice sheet loss) and earthquakes respectively. It also provides a necessary overview of geodetic software and where to obtain them.

Over the course of the twentieth century, scientists came to accept four counterintuitive yet fundamental facts about the Earth: deep time, continental drift, meteorite impact, and global warming. When first suggested, each proposition violated scientific orthodoxy and was quickly denounced as scientific—and sometimes religious—heresy. Nevertheless, after decades of rejection, scientists came to accept each theory. The stories behind these four discoveries reflect more than the fascinating push and pull of scientific work. They reveal the provocative nature of science and how it raises profound and sometimes uncomfortable truths as it advances. For example, counter to common sense, the Earth and the solar system are older than all of human existence; the interactions among the moving plates and the continents they carry account for nearly all of the Earth's surface features; and nearly every important feature of our solar system results from the chance collision of objects in space. Most surprising of all, we humans have altered the climate of an entire planet and now threaten the future of civilization. This absorbing scientific history is the only book to describe the evolution of these four ideas from heresy to truth, showing how science works in practice and how it inevitably corrects the mistakes of its practitioners. Scientists can be wrong, but they do not stay wrong. In the process, astonishing ideas are born, tested, and over time take root.

This volume brings together contributions from an experienced group of archaeologists and geologists whose common objective is to present thorough and current reviews of the diverse ways in which methods from the earth sciences can contribute to archaeological research. Many areas of research are addressed here, including artifact analysis and sourcing, landscape reconstruction and site formation analysis, soil micromorphology and geophysical exploration of buried sites.