This volume is the product of a technical session organized for the 2002 Geological Society of America Annual Meeting in recognition of Isaac Kaplan's many contributions to various fields of geochemistry. As Kaplan enters his sixth decade of scientific investigation, it is fair to say that his work has touched or influenced innumerable scientists either directly or indirectly. Readers of this volume are presented with a collection of 29 papers written by former students, post-doctoral researchers, friends and colleagues from countries all over the world (including Sweden, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, Israel and the United States) from the fields of stable isotope, forensic, environmental and petroleum geochemistry, atmospheric chemistry and cosmochemistry.The stable isotope section includes papers investigating climate change, diagenesis, recent sediment and petroleum geochemistry and cosmochemistry problems. The forensic and environmental geochemistry section includes a variety of papers ranging from trace metals in soils to atmospheric CO2 projections. The petroleum geochemistry section includes both basic research and applied geochemistry papers. The ancient and recent sediments section contains papers ranging from carbon flux in modern sediments to Precambrian microfossils. All of the articles together cover a broad range of geochemical studies and represent the diverse and distinguished career of Isaac Kaplan.

Continental margins form the relatively narrow transition zones between the different domains of land masses and deep-ocean basins. They are the main regions of sediment input and transfer of sediments to the oceans and thus represent important zones of sediment flux. This work addresses three topics of significance to continental margin development: sedimentation, mass-wasting and stability. It should be of interest to marine geologists, sedimentologists, palaeoceanographers and physical properties specialists.

Advances in the field of marine geoscience through the medium of deep-ocean drilling have been rapid and continue to be so. Part of this text reflects the results of findings from recent legs of the Ocean Drilling Programme. Other parts provide syntheses of the volume of drilling information collected over a period of more than 20 years, which provide a detailed picture of how oceans have evolved since the late Mesozoic. The book should be of interest to marine geologists, sedimentologists, palaeoceanographers and structural geologists.

A summary of the latest research in this field. The topics comprise the sedimentological examination and physical properties of the sedimentary solid phase, pore water and pore water constituents, organic matter as the driving force of most microbiological processes, biotic and abiotic redox reactions, carbonates and stable isotopes as proxies for paleoclimate reconstruction, metal enrichments in ferromanganese nodules and crusts as well as in hot vents and cold seeps on the seafloor. The current model conceptions lead to the development of different types of computer models, allowing the global mass exchanges between oceans and sediments to be balanced.