Central-Southern Italy and the Tyrrhenian Sea are the sites of extensive Plio-Quaternary magmatic activity. The rock compositions include crustal anatectic granites and rhyolites, tholeiitic, calc-alkaline, shoshonitic volcanics, and potassic to ultrapotassic and Na-alkaline volcanics. This very wide compositional variation makes Italian magmatism one of the most complex petrological issues, the understanding of which is a challenge for modern petrology and geochemistry. This book summarises the petrological, geochemical and volcanological characteristics of Italian Plio-Quaternary volcanism, and discusses petrogenetic hypotheses and possible geodynamics settings. The book is written for petrologists and geochemists, but fundamental geochemical information is well presented and the use of excessive jargon is avoided, making the book readable to a wide audience of Earth scientists.

This is an updated edition of the book by the same author: "Plio-Quaternary volcanism in Italy - Petrology, geochemistry, geodynamics," published in 2005 by Springer. This edition has the same structure as the previous publication, with a general introduction; various chapters dedicated to different volcanic provinces in Italy; and a final chapter on the relationships between magmatism and geodynamics. It includes information that has become available in the last ten years, and new chapters have been added offering detailed discussions of the Oligo-Miocene orogenic volcanism on Sardinia and of some small outcrops of fragmented volcanic rocks occurring in several places of the Apennines. This new edition now covers the entire Tyrrhenian Sea magmatism of the last 40 Ma. Lastly, it includes two appendices: Appendix 1 reports on a comparison between the Tyrrhenian Sea volcanism and the partially coeval magmatism along the Alps and adjoining areas and has the objective of highlighting similarities and difference that can tell us much on geodynamics and magmatism between the converging plates of Europe and Africa. Appendix 2 is an update of the 2005 edition appendix and deals with classification of orogenic rocks with special emphasis on potassic alkaline volcanics.

Over eighty contributions from leading researchers review 2.5 million years of environmental change and human cultural evolution in the Levant.

This impressive scientific resource presents up-to-date information on ten thousand years of volcanic activity on Earth. In the decade and a half since the previous edition was published new studies have refined assessments of the ages of many volcanoes, and several thousand new eruptions have been documented. This edition updates the book’s key components: a directory of volcanoes active during the Holocene; a chronology of eruptions over the past ten thousand years; a gazetteer of volcano names, synonyms, and subsidiary features; an extensive list of references; and an introduction placing these data in context. This edition also includes new photographs, data on the most common rock types forming each volcano, information on population densities near volcanoes, and other features, making it the most comprehensive source available on Earth’s dynamic volcanism.

"The Mediterranean region and Asia provide a natural laboratory to investigate the driving forces of continental tectonics in an ongoing collisional orogen and the crustal and mantle response to various modes of deformation associated with plate boundary processes. The multidisciplinary research efforts in this region over the last fifteen years have produced a wealth of new data to better understand the interplay and feedback mechanisms between crustal and mantle processes and the dynamic landscape evolution in a complexly deforming area. A number of discrete collisional events between the Gondwana-derived continental fragments (i.e., Adria, Pelagonia, Arabia, India) and Eurasia controlled the geodynamics of the Mediterranean region and Asia during the late Mesozoic and Cenozoic. This book is a collection of research papers, presenting new data, interpretations, and syntheses on various aspects of the collision-induced tectonic, magmatic, metamorphic, and geomorphic processes that have affected the evolution of this orogenic belt. It should help us better understand the mode and nature of tectonic and magmatic processes and crustal evolution in active collision zones, and the distribution and causes of seismic and volcanic events and their impact on landscape evolution."--Publisher's website.