Let us begin with the question: What is a pattern? The answer to this question is as much objective as it may be subjective. From the days unknown, the human race have started studying and appreciating the regular periodic features like movement of stars, moon, sun, the beautiful arrangement of petals in flowers, the shining faces of gems, and also the beautiful wings of a butterfly.

Seismic risk management in many countries around the world is a subject of crucial interest to today’s societies as the destructive effects of recent powerful earthquakes cannot be overlooked or ignored. Some of these seismic disasters that have hit Sabah (Malaysia) in 2015, Gorkha (Nepal) in 2015, Northwest Ecuador in 2016, Amatrice (Italy) in 2016, and Chaiapas (Mexico) in 2018 have affected millions of people and caused severe economic losses (Parra et al. 2016; Adhikari et al. 2015; Ramirez-Herrera et al. 2018; Faenza et al. 2016).
Accordingly, seismic design codes and frameworks are typically applied or improved after each earthquake disaster, but older buildings have not been updated to take advantage of these new methods, and they have shown poor behavior when subjected to the same seismic standards as newer constructions. <...>

Basic concepts of microtectonics are introduced and discussed in this chapter. The study of thin sections of rocks, which was originally mainly petrographic, has evolved during the last century to include a number of structural characteristics, that constitute the microstructure or fabric of a rock. The study of this fabric can be used to reconstruct the structural and metamorphic history, but also to improve the understanding of deformation and metamorphic processes.

This monograph is a new detailed study of large and unique ferrous, precious, base metal and rare metal deposits in Russia. It addresses complex interrelated problems of geological setting, magmatism, and ore genesis of Northeastern Transbaikalia, one of the Earth’s largest Paleoproterozoic metallogenic provinces. This area comprises three super-large and a number of ordinary deposits and occurrences. First of all, this province hosts 50 Mt of copper in sedimentary and magmatic rocks, including the giant Udokan deposit. Russia’s largest reserves of vanadium are concentrated within the Chiney gabbro-anorthosite pluton. And finally, the Katugin deposit, with unique reserves of niobium and zirconium, is also located here.

Geochemists recognize the utility of the rare earth elements (REE) as especially powerful tools for tracing geochemical processes within the earth. Interest in the REEs reflects, in large part, their unique and chemically coherent properties that arise as a result of their trivalent charge and the similar ionic radii of all 14 naturally occurring rare earths. For example, owing to their trivalent charge, the REEs are chemically fractionated from divalent Ba and tetravalent Hf, their nearest neighbors in the Periodic Table of the Elements.

Improved understanding of the Earth’s water cycle is a key element of global efforts to develop policies and practices for the sustainable management of water resources. Isotope and nuclear techniques have provided unmatched insights into the processes governing the water cycle and its variability under past and present climates. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) convened the first symposium on isotope hydrology in 1963. As isotope hydrology developed as an independent discipline, the IAEA symposia, convened every four years, provided a vehicle to review the state of the science and discuss future developments. Proceedings of these symposia contain classical papers that still form the basis of a number of applications in hydrology and inspire current research. <...>

The worldwide acceptance of the first edition of this book encouraged me to extensively revise and extend the second edition. The book was of value to readers of widely ranging interests as demonstrated by the letters received from scientists, students, mining engineers, editors of periodical papers and teachers.

This revision comes five years after the publication of the first edition. Many entries have been improved and now include new data. In total it includes about 25 000 entries, 1 500 graphic figures and 42 tables.

The first edition was criticized by readers who felt that some entries were not related to respective materials: but I would like to emphasize that many minerals are described in the form of references necessary for determining other gemstone materials.

In this edition chapters on light, color and colorant are dealt with in more depth, a large section introduces new terms applying to these areas.

If you have criticisms or suggestions please feel free to contact the author.

At the heart of crystallography lies an object – the crystal. Crystallography is concerned with the laws governing the crystalline state of solid materials, with the arrangement of atoms in crystals, and with their physical and chemical properties, their synthesis and their growth. <...>

Soils can act as a sink for anthropogenic and naturally released heavy metals. Among these are heavy metal oxides and sulfides, which are emitted e.g. by mining industry and metal smelting. The dissolution and transformation behavior of these heavy metal phases specifies their fate in the soil and determines whether the metals become bioavailable or could contaminate the groundwater. To gain more information about these dissolution reactions in soils, in-situ methods are needed. We present here a method to fix particulate metal phases on an inert support. This method allows us to expose and recover metal phases in the environment under controlled conditions.

Most simply put, taphonomy is the study of processes affecting the transition of the remains of past living organisms and their traces into the lithosphere as seen in the prehistoric record. It has many aspects, from processes affecting individual organisms to those affecting whole communities, but at its most basic level, the processes on which taphonomic interpretations are based are the same. Process is thus defined as the action of a taphonomic agent (Lyman 1994a), the agent being the immediate cause of modifications. The evidence by which process is identified in the fossil record is the effect it has on fossils, the biological, chemical and physical modifications preserved on the fossils. These modifications may be identified and interpreted through comparisons with observed processes produced by known agents acting on previously unmodified bones at the present time, either in experimentally controlled conditions or by naturalistic monitoring projects where agents and processes are known. <...>