Earth materials second edition free download pdf

Graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in groundwater science, hydrogeology and as secondary academic market civil engineering.

Reference for geoscientists and researchers in academe and industry. Add to cart. Sales tax will be calculated at check-out. Free Global Shipping. A range of natural earth materials, like arsenic or fluoride, have long been linked to significant human health effects.

Improved understanding of the pervasive and complex interactions between earth materials and human health will require creative collaborations between earth scientists and public health professionals.

At the request of the National Science Foundation, U. Geological Survey, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration, this National Research Council book assesses the current state of knowledge at the interface between the earth sciences and public health disciplines.

The book identifies high-priority areas for collaborative research, including understanding the transport and bioavailability of potentially hazardous earth materials, using risk-based scenarios to mitigate the public health effects of natural hazards under current and future climate regimes, and understanding the health risks that result from disturbance of earth systems.

Geospatial information - geological maps for earth scientists and epidemiological data for public health professionals - is identified as one of the essential integrative tools that is fundamental to the activities of both communities. The book also calls for increased data sharing between agencies to promote interdisciplinary research without compromising privacy. Dams and Appurtenant Hydraulic Structures, now in its second edition, provides a comprehensive and complete overview of all kinds of dams and appurtenant hydraulic structures throughout the world.

The reader is guided through different aspects of dams and appurtenant hydraulic structures in 35 chapters, which are subdivided in five themes:I. Dams an. Engineering Geology is a multidisciplinary subject that interacts with other disciplines, such as mineralogy, petrology, structural geology, hydrogeology, seismic engineering, rock engineering, soil mechanics, geophysics, remote sensing RS-GIS-GPS and environmental geology. This book is the only one of its kind in the Indian market that caters to the students of all these subjects.

Engineers require a deep understanding, interpretation and analyses of earth sciences before suggesting engineering designs and remedial measures to combat natural disasters, such as earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, debris flows, tsunamis and floods. This book covers all aspects of engineering geology and is intended to serve as a reference for practicing civil engineers, geotechnical engineers, marine engineers, geologists and mining engineers.

A plethora of examples and case studies relevant to the Indian context have been included for better understanding of the geological challenges faced by engineers. Designed specifically for one-semester courses, this beautifully illustrated textbook explains the key concepts in mineralogy and petrology.

Assuming an elementary knowledge of quantum and statistical physics, this book provides a guide to principal physical properties of condensed matter, as well as the underlying theory necessary for an understanding of their origins.

There is a large and growing need for a textbook that can form the basis for integrated classes that look at minerals, rocks, and other Earth materials. Despite the need, no high-quality book is available for such a course. Earth Materials is a wide-ranging undergraduate textbook that covers all the most important kinds of inorganic Earth materials. Besides traditional chapters on minerals and rocks, this book features chapters on sediments and stratigraphy, weathering and soils, water and the hydrosphere, and mineral and energy deposits.

Introductions to soil mechanics and rock mechanics are also included. Home Blog. Bansal Download. Introduction to Continuum Mechanics for Engineers. Applied Mechanics for Beginners. Elementary Dynamics: A Textbook for Engineers. Applied Mechanics and Strength of Materials. Mechanics of Rigid Body by Janusz Krodkiewski. Applied Mechanics for Engineers. Analytical Mechanics for Engineers by Fred B.

The writing is fine. It is not better or worse than the writing I have seen in textbooks for purchase. But see above regarding how frequently it would need to be revised to remain useful. Some of the headings are missing, which affects the searchability index. In summary, my current textbook covers 25 chapters and this one contains 8. There is some consolidation going on there, but the open source book is missing quite a lot of topics, in addition to the fact that consolidated chapters are more difficult to navigate.

See above regarding the low number of chapters and also some of the inconsistencies in format I do like some of the learning objectives for the existing chapters , which are in some cases similar to those I have intentionally added to my current course because they were not emphasized in the textbook I am using e.

That is ultimately one of the major reasons I chose my current textbook, and I one of the reasons I am not ready to switch away from it at this time. It is also one of my biggest complaints about the open source book that I currently use in another course. Not only are the images inferior in their design, but they also have technical limitations that are quite severe i. I noticed that this textbook is available as a Word document, and it looks like the images and text can be modified more effectively in that format, which is good but time consuming.

I also noticed a strange difference between the Word and. The Word version has a very readable font although of course that could be altered in the document. I did not notice instances of insensitivity, but the book is notably lacking in some of the most important key concepts that I emphasize in my class, such as environmental refugees, environmental justice, and environmental racism.

The exercise of reviewing this book has made me come to understand why environmental science textbooks are difficult to find in the open source format. This topic seems to be too time sensitive to lend itself to effective treatment by part-time authors who are not being paid to keep the book up to date.

It has made me think differently about possibly trying to compile resources myself instead of using any textbook at all in the event that I was motivated enough to make the leap to a low or zero cost lecture section. The text provides many definitions, but they are not compiled in a glossary. Comprehensiveness rating: 2 see less.

Very little analysis in the book; this made internal consistency relatively easy because definitions do not contradict. I reviewed this book with an eye to using it to make a course in Population, Environment, and Society stronger on the "Environment" component. I am sure that my students could benefit from some of the good descriptions of natural science facts and principles, but like some of the other reviewers, I found it heavy on the natural science side, and weak on social and economic issues.

For instance, Chapter 4 on Energy did not connect back to stages of the Demographic Transition presented in chapter 3: there is no physical science reason for making such connections, but plenty of social science reasons.

Chapter 5 on Alternative Energy was probably the best for population and environment courses: it covered upsides and downsides of various alternatives in ways that would help my students understand that while innovation has allowed population to grow far larger than previous generations thought possible, innovation also brings new challenges.

I liked being able to appreciate some of the basic science behind conclusions like "biomass energy can and cannot be carbon neutral. A previous review said that the book handles human demography well, but because there was no attention to variation in the lag between the onset of mortality decline and fertility decline, I found the treatment wanting.

While, this book covers common topics suitable for environmental instruction of Introduction to Environmental Sciences, the comprehensiveness of the book would increase by adding chapters on: Agriculture, Economics, Biogeochemistry, as well as While, this book covers common topics suitable for environmental instruction of Introduction to Environmental Sciences, the comprehensiveness of the book would increase by adding chapters on: Agriculture, Economics, Biogeochemistry, as well as separate chapters for Oceans and Freshwater.

One major problematic departure from our coursework is on economics in environmental science and its strong associations with human energy usage. Excepting an occasional passing mention on cost often without the defining basis, it otherwise wholly ignores micro- or macroeconomics as a holistic lense to view energy and environmental decision-making. For agriculture, the topic is mostly ignored, with the interest chiefly in the sector as a pollutant culminating in one page given to its major role in N2O emissions as the majority of their reference to perhaps the most intensive human efforts applying scientific ingenuity to managing the environment.

The book handles Population i. Regarding Environmental policy, relevant policies are mentioned throughout; however ,there is no formal approach to how environmental policies are formulated. Occasionally the authors do offer guidance on policy but appear to be derivatives of their personal ethical perspectives, rather than argued conclusions on compared equities.

Core topics appear to be well related. As mentioned in the Comprehensiveness section, there are relevant discussion areas that should be covered, and some interjections, as mentioned for policy, that may be biased guidance. Due to the prospective nature of addressing climate change, graphs often are predictive for a near future and in danger of inaccuracies.

Similarly references on energy-use will become dated. There are references to websites for additional resources, a Youtube link for a coal powerplant description, and an Excel spreadsheet for a list of terms that may be subject to third party accessibility. Most of the basic science and theories are pretty definitive. Chapters begin with Learning objectives and chapter contents.

The book is written with an accessible prose and examples on elk, cacti, and US energy-use are most familiar to a North American audience. While more distracting than confusing, many times labelled terms are used prior to being defined e. The first chapter does not follow the formatting or numbered headings of the succeeding chapters and could use subheadings. The end-of-chapter prompts vary in formatting and title, e.

The end-of-chapter term lists vary in formatting, and in one chapter relegated to an Excel spreadsheet. The differing formats hints that these chapters were separately written, which may be why they seem modular enough to address in any order.

Subheadings are present in most chapters aside from the first. Chapter contents are also given. The first chapter suffered from explaining biological molecules within cells, before defining cells. Understandably challenging because the flow was apparently to explain relevant science from physics to biology, then groupings in biology from cells to populations and ecosystems, but surprising to find the definition so late.

Following the descriptions of the environment then the scientific method, the chapter then delves into sustainability, and other lenses to view environmental science without good transitions. Most pictures and graphs are helpful. One graph of survivorship curves includes presumably data from the 20th century mixed with curves to the 22nd century. Mixing data with predictions is confusing and may age poorly.

It does not seem culturally insensitive, but the section on human demographics could have included racial, ethnic, or even regional breakdowns for greater relevance. I would like to commend the authors for putting time and efforts towards developing this textbook and making it available for all. Environmental Science is the study of human interaction with the natural world, and therefore incorporates knowledge from both the natural and the social sciences.

But this text takes a narrower definition. This means that it requires the knowledge of various other subjects including biology, chemistry, physics, statistics, microbiology, biochemistry, geology, economics, law, sociology, etc. This is unfortunate, but it is not uncommon, and environmental science faculty are accustomed to having to bring additional social science readings into their classes.

The text includes a very high-level table of contents. There are more detailed outlines within all but one chapter, adding one or two more levels of structure, and the inconsistency between chapters in this regard is quite obvious. The chapters are i. Introduction ii. Population Ecology iii.

Human Demography iv. Non-Renewable Energy v. Alternative Energy vi. Air Pollution vii. Climate Change viii. Water While all of the subjects included are relevant to environmental science, they represent only a subset of what would normally be considered in an environmental science textbook.

Notably absent are chapters on topics such as waste, ozone depletion, risk assessment, agriculture, biodiversity, and oceans and the marine environment. There is no index, which is a real short-coming. I found no obvious errors or evidence of bias other than the rather unavoidable one that favors environmental protection over some aspects of industrial society. The topics that are covered are still completely relevant, as are the examples used to illustrate them. Some of the figures and tables are somewhat dated and should be replaced with more current ones.

For example, the most recent stratospheric ozone data shown are for Not showing more current values misses the opportunity to illustrate the positive benefit that accrues from international cooperation on science-based solutions to environmental challenges.

Missing are zone-depletion area data between and which show very compelling evidence that the problem has stopped growing, likely due to this cooperative response.

The text is generally clear and explains terms used, though the depth and quality of these explanations vary from chapter to chapter. There is also variability in the level of science such as chemistry included in discussions of the issues. There is fairly good consistency of terminology, but the framework varies considerably from chapter to chapter. The book suffers from a lack of integration editing. There is a notable inconsistency in the use of chapter outlines at the beginning of chapters.

One chapter Climate Change has none, while the others have either one or two levels of depth. The latter also use inconsistent numbering schemes for their subdivisions. In some chapters there are several pages that go by without any subheadings, making navigation challenging and creating daunting quantities of unbroken text apt to keep students from reading thoroughly. This makes the user interface to the text awkward at best, and is prone to presenting a barrier to students already intimidated by the subject matter, such as students taking the course out of a general education requirement rather than genuine interest in the subject.

It is quite clear that the text was created by assembling chapters written by different authors without much effort put into integration or flow. Beyond the writing style differing in each chapter, one detects a difference in approach, and I have rarely found an example of one chapter referring to something discussed in a previous chapter. Strangely, the chapters each maintain their own page numbers, which is probably why the table of contents includes no page numbers.

This will also make it awkward for faculty to refer students to particular sections easily. In at least one chapter Climate Change the order seems awkward — climate change is discussed fairly extensively before the science behind it is introduced, thus assuming the students bring some knowledge of the science to the discussion before the chapter addresses it.

No obvious errors were found in the placement of and reference to figures and tables. But in many chapters, there are large stretches of text without much relief either from illustrations or examples problems. For example, though the introductory chapter provides a cursory review of fundamental chemistry, these are not generally recalled in subsequent chapters to illustrate points made. Such illustrations would serve to break up the intensive reading and also to reinforce the science behind the claims made in the chapters.

There is also a missed opportunity to provide hypertext links within the textbook. These would allow students confused by a term for example to link to a portion of the text in which that term is defined and illustrated. Similarly, when viewing the text in Adobe Reader I was not able to find a navigation approach other than previous or next pages or the use of the scroll bar.

I have not found any outright grammatical errors, but there are occasions of questionable sentence structure and punctuation. No inappropriate language or claims that might offend a diverse readership were found. Some photographs include people from various cultures, though I have found no references to cultural differences as they might impact the environmental issues discussed.

And there is no discussion whatsoever of the role of culture in environmental impacts and action. A crucial part of environmental science is the social context. While there are occasional oblique references to some social context issues, it is not addressed explicitly by this text.

This book would be substantially improved by 1.