This unique book presents hundreds of spectacular photographs of large-scale to small-scale field geological features of flood basalt volcanism from around the world. Major flood basalt provinces covered in this book include the British Palaeogene, Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, Columbia River, Deccan, East Greenland, Emeishan, Ethiopian, Ferrar-Karoo-Tasmania, Iceland, Indo-Madagascar, Paraná, Siberian, West Greenland, and others. Intermediate- to small-sized flood basalts (such as Saudi Arabia and South Caucasus) are also included. Different chapters of the book illustrate varied features of flood basalts, including landscapes, lava flow morphology and stacking, structures formed during lava flow transport, inflation and degassing, structures produced during lava solidification, subaqueous volcanism and volcanosedimentary associations, explosive volcanism, intrusions, igneous processes and magmatic diversity, tectonic deformation, secondary mineralization, and weathering and erosion. This book will be valuable for a large audience: specialists studying flood basalt volcanology, petrology, geochemistry, geochronology, geophysics, and environmental impact and mass extinction links; nonspecialists who want to know more about flood basalts; field geologists (such as those working in geological surveys); students of volcanology and igneous petrology, and even people employed in the industry, such as those working on flood basalt-hosted groundwater or petroleum reservoirs.

"Exposed crustal cross sections provide a unique direct view of continental crust, and are a major source of insights into variations in lithologic and geochemical composition, structural style, metamorphism, plutonism, and rheology with progressive depth through the crust. This volume provides a synthesis of crustal cross sections with a special emphasis on Phanerozoic sections from the western North American Cordillera, supplemented by articles on lower- and mid-crustal sections through Proterozoic crust in North America and Australia, and the classic crustal section of Fiordland, New Zealand. Many of the papers describe multidisciplinary research on crustal sections and include data from various combinations of structural analysis, geochemistry, geothermobarometry, geochronology, geophysics, and other disciplines. The volume also discusses common problems for the interpretation of crustal cross sections, including how sections that expose deep-crustal rocks are eventually exhumed, and leading to the conclusion that there is no simple 'standard model' for continental crust. This volume will be useful to those interested in structural geology, tectonics, geodynamics, regional geology, petrology, geochemistry/isotope geology, and geophysics."--Pub. desc.