The Himalaya is well known as the largest and highest mountain belt on Earth. Advances in geoscience over the past few decades have revealed a complex picture of the dynamics of this giant, opening up questions about the initial stages of Himalayan building, lateral variations in its structures, variations in tectonic forcing, tectonic-climate coupling and assessments of the natural hazards affecting this area. In this three-volume book, we present the current knowledge on the building and present-day behavior of the Himalayan range. The objective is not to be exhaustive, but to provide some key elements used by researchers to unravel the many processes acting in the Himalayan dynamics. Mountain environments are at the forefront of climate change with glacier retreat, landslides, flash floods and water availability. Understanding the delicate balance that controls the dynamics of the Himalayan giant is now, more than ever, a major challenge for the scientific community.

The Himalaya–Karakoram–Tibet mountain belt resulted from Cenozoic collision of India and Asia and is frequently used as the type example of a continental collision orogenic belt. The last quarter of a century has seen the publication of a remarkably detailed dataset relevant to the evolution of this belt. Detailed fieldwork backed up by state-of-the-art structural analysis, geochemistry, mineral chemistry, igneous and metamorphic petrology, isotope chemistry, sedimentology and geophysics produced a wide-ranging archive of data-rich scientific papers. The rationale for this book is to provide a coherent overview of these datasets in addressing the evolution of the mountain ranges we see today. This volume comprises 21 specially invited review papers on the Himalaya, Kohistan arc, Tibet, the Karakoram and Pamir ranges. These papers span the history of Himalayan research, chronology of the collision, stratigraphy, magmatic and metamorphic processes, structural geology and tectonics, seismicity, geophysics, and the evolution of the Indian monsoon. This landmark set of papers should underpin the next 25 years of Himalayan research.

The Himalayan mountain belt, which developed during the India–Asia collision starting about 55 Ma ago, is a dramatically active orogen and it is regarded as the classic collisional orogen. It is characterized by an impressively continuous 2500 km of tectonic units, thrusts and normal faults, as well as large volumes of high-grade metamorphic rocks and granites exposed at the surface. This constitutes an invaluable field laboratory, where amazing crustal sections can be observed directly in very deep gorges. It is possible to unravel the tectonic and metamorphic evolution of litho-units, to observe the mechanisms of exhumation of deep-seated rocks and the propagation of the deformation. Himalayan tectonics has been the target of many studies from numerous international researchers over the years. In the last 15 years there has been an explosion of data and theories from both geological and geophysical perspectives. This book presents the results of integrated multidisciplinary studies, including geology, petrology, magmatism, geochemistry, geochronology and geophysics, of the structures and processes affecting the continental lithosphere. These processes and their spatial and temporal evolution have major consequences on the geometry and kinematics of the India–Eurasia collision zone.

"Spanning eight kilometers of topographic relief, the Himalayan fold-thrust belt in Nepal has accommodated more than 700 km of Cenozoic convergence between the Indian subcontinent and Asia. Rapid tectonic shortening and erosion in a monsoonal climate have exhumed greenschist to upper amphibolite facies rocks along with unmetamorphosed rocks, including a 5-6-km-thick Cenozoic foreland basin sequence. This Special Paper presents new geochronology, multisystem thermochronology, structural geology, and geological mapping of an approximately 37,000 km2 region in midwestern and western Nepal. This work informs enduring Himalayan debates, including how and where to map the Main Central thrust, the geometry of the seismically active basal Himalayan detachment, processes of tectonic shortening in the context of postcollisional India-Asia convergence, and long-term geodynamics of the orogenic wedge"--Publisher's website

The monograph covers the fundamentals and the consequences of extreme geophysical phenomena like asteroid impacts, climatic change, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, flooding, and space weather. This monograph also addresses their associated, local and worldwide socio-economic impacts. The understanding and modeling of these phenomena is critical to the development of timely worldwide strategies for the prediction of natural and anthropogenic extreme events, in order to mitigate their adverse consequences. This monograph is unique in as much as it is dedicated to recent theoretical, numerical and empirical developments that aim to improve: (i) the understanding, modeling and prediction of extreme events in the geosciences, and, (ii) the quantitative evaluation of their economic consequences. The emphasis is on coupled, integrative assessment of the physical phenomena and their socio-economic impacts. With its overarching theme, Extreme Events: Observations, Modeling and Economics will be relevant to and become an important tool for researchers and practitioners in the fields of hazard and risk analysis in general, as well as to those with a special interest in climate change, atmospheric and oceanic sciences, seismo-tectonics, hydrology, and space weather.