Late glacial and postglacial environmental changes : Quaternary, Carboniferous-Permian, and Proterozoic /

Global climate and efforts to understand and predict future changes have been the subjects of much debate in the scientific community. Though many syntheses have looked to the latest data from modern polar ice caps and deep sea basin sediments for answers about these topics, the collection of papers in this volume focuses largely on evidence offered by terrestrial and nearshore deposits. Specifically, data from the best known glacial periods, the Quaternary and Carboniferous-Permian, are compared to determine which variables provide the most sensitive signals for predicting past and pending change. Roughly half the papers are highly focused accounts outlining the distribution of glacial and postglacial features of specific regions or continental land masses. In this regard, they are so narrow that they would be of interest mainly to specialists. Other papers, however, are principle-oriented; discussions about past megafloods, temperate paleosols and peats, glaciogenic deposits, and tectonism provide a background for either nonspecialists concerned with general issues or for researchers working with glacial deposits produced during other times in Earth's history. An up-to-date, colored paleogeographic map showing key geological features and events during four Permian time slices is included. Recommended for upper-division undergraduates through faculty. J. H. Beck; Boston College