A View of Earth, Man and the Geosciences

The book covers a wide range of scientific topics in developing a perspective of the ground we stand on and its importance to us and our wellbeing. It starts by charting Man's historical enquiries of the cosmos in Chapter 1 and outlines our current understanding of the Universe and planet Earth through Chapters 2 and 3. Earth is linked to and constantly interacts with not only its immediate environs comprising the planets in our corner of space and the Sun which lights up our days, but...
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The book covers a wide range of scientific topics in developing a perspective of the ground we stand on and its importance to us and our wellbeing. It starts by charting Man's historical enquiries of the cosmos in Chapter 1 and outlines our current understanding of the Universe and planet Earth through Chapters 2 and 3. Earth is linked to and constantly interacts with not only its immediate environs comprising the planets in our corner of space and the Sun which lights up our days, but the vast Universe beyond. The Moon tugs our seas and oceans creating continuous tidal fluctuations; the Sun provides energy for life but also bombards us with solar winds of charged particles that affect our electricity supplies, communications and could potentially be detrimental to life; the Milky Way is our home within an ever changing Universe that could one day see our demise. An aim of the book is to set the role of geotechnical engineering and geology in the context of other pure and applied sciences and this entails investigating how these geosciences overlap with the sciences of astronomy, astrophysics, physics, chemistry and the environmental sciences. The early chapters set the background to the earth science topics delved into in later chapters and allow a fuller and more interesting story to be told. They put into context the nature and complexity of soils and rocks on Earth, as described in Chapter 4, and the utilization of the ground and exploitation of its natural resources in Chapter 5. In Chapter 6, the significance of ground gases and the interaction of the ground with our layered, protective atmospheric blanket, including the importance and source of greenhouse gases, is explored. The subsequent Chapter 7 on our 'Changing Planet' first looks at the influence of phenomena such as earthquakes, faults and volcanoes and then extends the discussion into further important aspects of Earth's atmosphere including the significance of ground-generated aerosol particles. Chapter 7 then explores the potentially detrimental environmental consequences of mankind's growth, as the dominant Earth species, in terms of Global Warming and contamination. Earth's water environment (the oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, groundwater and atmospheric water) is not dealt with as a separate chapter but is integral and of vital importance to much of the discussions and accordingly dealt with in this way.The same science principles that apply on Earth apply in the distant reaches of space, though the physics is often far more extreme than our everyday experiences. Nevertheless, we see on our planet anomalies and complexities in behaviour that are not readily understood, but need to be reconciled with scientific principles in order to develop simplified engineering, geological and environmental predictive tools. The development of our understanding of the ground in a geotechnical context requires an interpretation of the ground's characteristics based on sound scientific principles and Chapters 8 and 9 extend the book to explore how these apply. These latter chapters outline recent research into the implications of thermodynamics in interpreting the ground's engineering characteristics, particularly for the troublesome, composite three-phase materials comprising unsaturated soils. The ground is multifaceted in both its characteristics and behaviour and a deeper understanding of the nature and character of the ground should lead to improvements in prediction of its complex physiognomy.