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Uncertainty and Ground Conditions: A Risk Management Approach
by Martin van StaverenAll civil engineering and construction projects require some sort of solid foundation, but ground conditions bring some degree of uncertainty to every project. Dealing properly with uncertainty over ground conditions can make the difference between the commercial success and failure of a project.With the costs of failing to accurately predict groun
Uncertainty and Risk: Multidisciplinary Perspectives
by Gabriele Bammer Michael Smithson�This is a major, and deeply thoughtful, contribution to understanding uncertainty and risk. Our world and its unprecedented challenges need such ways of thinking! Much more than a set of contributions from different disciplines, this book leads you to explore your own way of perceiving your own area of work. An outstanding contribution that will stay on my shelves for many years.� Dr Neil T. M. Hamilton, Director, WWF International Arctic Programme �This collection of essays provides a unique and fascinating overview of perspectives on uncertainty and risk across a wide variety of disciplines. It is a valuable and accessible sourcebook for specialists and laypeople alike.� Professor Renate Schubert, Head of the Institute for Environmental Decisions and Chair of Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology �This comprehensive collection of disciplinary perspectives on uncertainty is a definitive guide to contemporary insights into this Achilles� heel of modernity and the endemic hubris of institutional science in its role as public authority. It gives firm foundations to the fundamental historic shift now underway in the world, towards normalizing acceptance of the immanent condition of ignorance and of its practical corollaries: contingency, uncontrol, and respect for difference.� Brian Wynne, Professor of Science Studies, Lancaster University �Bammer and Smithson have assembled a fascinating, important collection of papers on uncertainty and its management. The integrative nature of Uncertainty and Risk makes it a landmark in the intellectual history of this vital cross-disciplinary concept.� George Cvetkovich, Director, Center for Cross-Cultural Research, Western Washington University Uncertainty governs our lives. From the unknowns of living with the risks of terrorism to developing policies on genetically modified foods, or disaster planning for catastrophic climate change, how we conceptualize, evaluate and cope with uncertainty drives our actions and deployment of resources, decisions and priorities. In this thorough and wide-ranging volume, theoretical perspectives are drawn from art history, complexity science, economics, futures, history, law, philosophy, physics, psychology, statistics and theology. On a practical level, uncertainty is examined in emergency management, intelligence, law enforcement, music, policy and politics. Key problems that are a subject of focus are environmental management, communicable diseases and illicit drugs. Opening and closing sections of the book provide major conceptual strands in uncertainty thinking and develop an integrated view of the nature of uncertainty, uncertainty as a motivating or de-motivating force, and strategies for coping and managing under uncertainty.
Uncertainty and the Philosophy of Climate Change
by Martin BunzlWhen it comes to climate change, the greatest difficulty we face is that we do not know the likely degree of change or its cost, which means that environmental policy decisions have to be made under uncertainty. This book offers an accessible philosophical treatment of the broad range of ethical and policy challenges posed by climate change uncertainty. Drawing on both the philosophy of science and ethics, Martin Bunzl shows how tackling climate change revolves around weighing up our interests now against those of future generations, which requires that we examine our assumptions about the value of present costs versus future benefits. In an engaging, conversational style, Bunzl looks at questions such as our responsibility towards non-human life, the interests of the developing and developed worlds, and how the circumstances of poverty shape the perception of risk, ultimate developing and defending a view of humanity and its place in the world that makes sense of our duty to Nature without treating it as a rights bearer. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of environmental studies, philosophy, politics and sociology as well as policy makers.
The Uncertainty Business: Risks and Opportunities in Weather and Climate
by W. J. MaunderOriginally published in 1986, this book discusses the value of weather and climate information in government and business decision-making. It issues a strong manifesto for the development of new areas of research requiring the skills of weather scientists, geographers, economists, planners and political scientists. It offers a coherent and non-technical presentation of this climatology, supported with practical guidance on assessing the impacts of weather and climate on human affairs.
Uncertainty Management for Robust Industrial Design in Aeronautics: Findings and Best Practice Collected During UMRIDA, a Collaborative Research Project (2013–2016) Funded by the European Union (Notes on Numerical Fluid Mechanics and Multidisciplinary Design #140)
by Charles Hirsch Dirk Wunsch Jacek Szumbarski Łukasz Łaniewski-Wołłk Jordi Pons-PratsThis book covers cutting-edge findings related to uncertainty quantification and optimization under uncertainties (i.e. robust and reliable optimization), with a special emphasis on aeronautics and turbomachinery, although not limited to these fields. It describes new methods for uncertainty quantification, such as non-intrusive polynomial chaos, collocation methods, perturbation methods, as well as adjoint based and multi-level Monte Carlo methods. It includes methods for characterization of most influential uncertainties, as well as formulations for robust and reliable design optimization. A distinctive element of the book is the unique collection of test cases with prescribed uncertainties, which are representative of the current engineering practice of the industrial consortium partners involved in UMRIDA, a level 1 collaborative project within the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). All developed methods are benchmarked against these industrial challenges. Moreover, the book includes a section dedicated to Best Practice Guidelines for uncertainty quantification and robust design optimization, summarizing the findings obtained by the consortium members within the UMRIDA project. All in all, the book offers a authoritative guide to cutting-edge methodologies for uncertainty management in engineering design, covers a wide range of applications and discusses new ideas for future research and interdisciplinary collaborations.
Uncertainty Management in Remote Sensing of Climate Data: Summary of a Workshop
by National Research Council of the National AcademiesGreat advances have been made in our understanding of the climate system over the past few decades, and remotely sensed data have played a key role in supporting many of these advances. Improvements in satellites and in computational and data-handling techniques have yielded high quality, readily accessible data. However, rapid increases in data volume have also led to large and complex datasets that pose significant challenges in data analysis. Uncertainty characterization is needed for every satellite mission and scientists continue to be challenged by the need to reduce the uncertainty in remotely sensed climate records and projections. The approaches currently used to quantify the uncertainty in remotely sensed data lack an overall mathematically based framework. An additional challenge is characterizing uncertainty in ways that are useful to a broad spectrum of end-users. In December 2008, the National Academies held a workshop, summarized in this volume, to survey how statisticians, climate scientists, and remote sensing experts might address the challenges of uncertainty management in remote sensing of climate data. The workshop emphasized raising and discussing issues that could be studied more intently by individual researchers or teams of researchers, and setting the stage for possible future collaborative activities.
Uncertainty, Modeling, and Decision Making in Geotechnics
by Kok-Kwang Phoon, Takayuki Shuku, and Jianye ChingUncertainty, Modeling, and Decision Making in Geotechnics shows how uncertainty quantification and numerical modeling can complement each other to enhance decision-making in geotechnical practice, filling a critical gap in guiding practitioners to address uncertainties directly. The book helps practitioners acquire a working knowledge of geotechnical risk and reliability methods and guides them to use these methods wisely in conjunction with data and numerical modeling. In particular, it provides guidance on the selection of realistic statistics and a cost-effective, accessible method to address different design objectives, and for different problem settings, and illustrates the value of this to decision-making using realistic examples. Bringing together statistical characterization, reliability analysis, reliability-based design, probabilistic inverse analysis, and physical insights drawn from case studies, this reference guide from an international team of experts offers an excellent resource for state-of-the-practice uncertainty-informed geotechnical design for specialist practitioners and the research community.
Uncertainty Quantification and Predictive Computational Science: A Foundation for Physical Scientists and Engineers
by Ryan G. McClarrenThis textbook teaches the essential background and skills for understanding and quantifying uncertainties in a computational simulation, and for predicting the behavior of a system under those uncertainties. It addresses a critical knowledge gap in the widespread adoption of simulation in high-consequence decision-making throughout the engineering and physical sciences. Constructing sophisticated techniques for prediction from basic building blocks, the book first reviews the fundamentals that underpin later topics of the book including probability, sampling, and Bayesian statistics. Part II focuses on applying Local Sensitivity Analysis to apportion uncertainty in the model outputs to sources of uncertainty in its inputs. Part III demonstrates techniques for quantifying the impact of parametric uncertainties on a problem, specifically how input uncertainties affect outputs. The final section covers techniques for applying uncertainty quantification to make predictions under uncertainty, including treatment of epistemic uncertainties. It presents the theory and practice of predicting the behavior of a system based on the aggregation of data from simulation, theory, and experiment. The text focuses on simulations based on the solution of systems of partial differential equations and includes in-depth coverage of Monte Carlo methods, basic design of computer experiments, as well as regularized statistical techniques. Code references, in python, appear throughout the text and online as executable code, enabling readers to perform the analysis under discussion. Worked examples from realistic, model problems help readers understand the mechanics of applying the methods. Each chapter ends with several assignable problems. Uncertainty Quantification and Predictive Computational Science fills the growing need for a classroom text for senior undergraduate and early-career graduate students in the engineering and physical sciences and supports independent study by researchers and professionals who must include uncertainty quantification and predictive science in the simulations they develop and/or perform.
Uncertainty Quantification for Hyperbolic and Kinetic Equations (SEMA SIMAI Springer Series #14)
by Shi Jin Lorenzo PareschiThis book explores recent advances in uncertainty quantification for hyperbolic, kinetic, and related problems. The contributions address a range of different aspects, including: polynomial chaos expansions, perturbation methods, multi-level Monte Carlo methods, importance sampling, and moment methods. The interest in these topics is rapidly growing, as their applications have now expanded to many areas in engineering, physics, biology and the social sciences. Accordingly, the book provides the scientific community with a topical overview of the latest research efforts.
Uncharted Waters: The New Economics of Water Scarcity and Variability
by Richard Damania Sébastien Desbureaux Marie Hyland Islam Aude-Sophie Rodella Jason Russ Esha ZaveriThe 21st century will witness the collision of two powerful forces - burgeoning population growth, together with a changing climate. With population growth, water scarcity will proliferate to new areas across the globe. And with climate change, rainfall will become more fickle, with longer and deeper periods of droughts and deluges. This report presents new evidence to advance understanding on how rainfall shocks coupled with water scarcity, impacts farms, firms, and families. On farms, the largest consumers of water in the world, impacts are channeled from declining yields to changing landscapes. In cities, water extremes especially when combined with unreliable infrastructure can stall firm production, sales, and revenue. At the center of this are families, who feel the impacts of this uncertainty on their incomes, jobs, and long-term health and welfare. Although a rainfall shock may be fleeting, its consequences can become permanent and shape the destiny of those who experience it. Pursuing business as usual will lead many countries down a 'parched path' where droughts shape destinies. Avoiding this misery in slow motion will call for fundamental changes to water policy around the globe. Building resilience to rainfall variability will require using different policy instruments to address the multifaceted nature of water. A key message of this report is that water has multiple economic attributes, each of which entail distinct policy responses. If water is not managed more prudently--from source, to tap, and back to source--the crises observed today will become the catastrophes of tomorrow.
Uncommon Cause: Living for Environmental Justice in Kerala
by John MathiasHow can activists strike a balance between fighting for a cause and sustaining relationships with family, friends, and neighbors? Uncommon Cause follows environmental justice activists in Kerala, India, as they seek out, avoid, or strive to overcome conflicts between their causes and their community ties. John Mathias finds two contrasting approaches, each offering distinct possibilities for an activist life. One set of activists repudiates community ties and resists normative pressures; for them, environmental justice becomes a way of transcending all local identities and affiliations, even humanity itself. Other activists seek to ground their activism in community belonging, to fight for their own people. Each approach produces its own dilemmas and offers its own insights into ethical tensions we all face between taking a stand and standing with others. In sharing Kerala activists’ diverse stories, Uncommon Cause offers a fresh perspective on environmental ethics, showing that environmentalism, even as it looks beyond merely human concerns, is still fundamentally about how we relate to other people.
Unconventional Hydrocarbon Reservoirs: Coal and Shale (Petroleum Engineering)
by Bodhisatwa Hazra Debanjan Chandra Vikram VishalThis informative book offers a comprehensive exploration of critical reservoir parameters, including quantification techniques and interpretations for evaluating these reservoirs. Readers will also gain insight into the fundamental principles of simulating gas production from coal and shale reservoirs, as well as the key input parameters for building the best-fit reservoir model. Additionally, the book explores various aspects of storing captured CO2 in these reservoirs and their potential role in preventing global temperature increases beyond pre-industrial levels.Energy from conventional petroleum reservoirs and coal has been the backbone of global energy needs for a long time. However, depletion of these fossil fuel reserves, as well as their contribution to rising greenhouse emissions, has prompted a shift to renewable energy sources. Natural gas found in unconventional coal and shale reservoirs is increasingly seen as a greener energy option, emitting approximately 45% less CO2 than conventional sources. Furthermore, due to their vast availability and capacity to sequester atmospheric CO2, unconventional coal and shale reservoirs can facilitate the transition to renewable energy resources.With a focus on achieving temperature stabilization at 1.5°C, this book offers a valuable resource for those interested in renewable energy and mitigating climate change.
Unconventional Hydrocarbon Resources: Prediction and Modeling Using Artificial Intelligence Approaches
by Sid-Ali OuadfeulUnconventional Hydrocarbon Resources Enables readers to save time and effort in exploring and exploiting shale gas and other unconventional fossil fuels by making use of advanced predictive tools Unconventional Hydrocarbon Resources highlights novel concepts and techniques for the geophysical exploration of shale and other tight hydrocarbon reservoirs, focusing on artificial intelligence approaches for modeling and predicting key reservoir properties such as pore pressure, water saturation, and wellbore stability. Numerous application examples and case studies present real-life data from different unconventional hydrocarbon fields such as the Barnett Shale (USA), the Williston Basin (USA), and the Berkine Basin (Algeria). Unconventional Hydrocarbon Resources explores a wide range of reservoir properties, including modeling of the geomechanics of shale gas reservoirs, petrophysics analysis of shale and tight sand gas reservoirs, and prediction of hydraulic fracturing effects, fluid flow, and permeability. Sample topics covered in Unconventional Hydrocarbon Resources include: Calculation of petrophysical parameter curves for non-conventional reservoir modeling and characterization Comparison of the Levenberg-Marquardt and conjugate gradient learning methods for total organic carbon prediction in the Barnett shale gas reservoir Use of pore effective compressibility for quantitative evaluation of low resistive pays and identifying sweet spots in shale reservoirs Pre-drill pore pressure estimation in shale gas reservoirs using seismic genetic inversion Using well-log data to classify lithofacies of a shale gas reservoir Unconventional Hydrocarbon Resources is a valuable resource for researchers and professionals working on unconventional hydrocarbon exploration and in geoengineering projects.
Unconventional Oil and Gas Resources: Exploitation and Development (Emerging Trends and Technologies in Petroleum Engineering)
by Usman Ahmed D. Nathan MeehanAs the shale revolution continues in North America, unconventional resource markets are emerging on every continent. In the next eight to ten years, more than 100,000 wells and one- to two-million hydraulic fracturing stages could be executed, resulting in close to one trillion dollars in industry spending. This growth has prompted professionals ex
Unconventional Reservoirs: A Reservoir Engineering Approach (SpringerBriefs in Petroleum Geoscience & Engineering)
by Amin Taghavinejad Mehdi Ostadhassan Reza DaneshfarThis book provides a succinct overview on the application of rate and pressure transient analysis in unconventional petroleum reservoirs. It begins by introducing unconventional reservoirs, including production challenges, and continues to explore the potential benefits of rate and pressure analysis methods. Rate transient analysis (RTA) and pressure transient analysis (PTA) are techniques for evaluating petroleum reservoir properties such as permeability, original hydrocarbon in-place, and hydrocarbon recovery using dynamic data. The brief introduces, describes and classifies both techniques, focusing on the application to shale and tight reservoirs. Authors have used illustrations, schematic views, and mathematical formulations and code programs to clearly explain application of RTA and PTA in complex petroleum systems. This brief is of an interest to academics, reservoir engineers and graduate students.
Unconventional Resources: Advances in Energy Transition
by Cenk Temizel Cengiz Yegin Jihoon Kim Luigi Saputelli Ole TorsæterThe oil and gas sector is a vital player in the energy transition. With their vast resource potential, unconventional shale plays will be an essential part in enabling this change. Unconventional Resources serves as a comprehensive reference covering the latest technologies, methodologies, and applications of unconventional shale resources in the oil and gas industry, and their role in the evolution of the sector's energy transition.This book: Offers an overview of geophysics, geology, and reservoir characterization in unconventional resources Discusses drilling, well stimulation and completion, production engineering, and artificial lift Covers reservoir management and surveillance, recovery enhancement, production forecasting, and surface facilities and testing Details technical and technological advances, including machine learning, AI, data analytics, and Industry 4.0 Explores the latest methods/workflows in performance analysis in unconventional plays Employs integrated and hybrid approaches to the energy transition The book provides surface and subsurface technical professionals in the oil and gas industry a thorough overview of unconventionals along with the integrated/hybrid applications that will enable them to stay current with the industry's transition.
Unconventional Shale Gas Exploration and Exploitation: Current Trends in Shale Gas Exploitation (Advances in Oil and Gas Exploration & Production)
by Annapurna Boruah Sumit Verma Shib Sankar GanguliFrom the geological mysteries of shale formations to cutting-edge techniques in gas extraction, this book unveils the essential knowledge to harness the potential of shale gas. The book integrates various data types such as outcrop, well logs, core data, etc.) for hydrofracturing—from basin-scale to nano-pore-scale. The book included a wealth of information on the latest advancements, industry practices, environmental considerations, policies, and more. In a world increasingly conscious of environmental concerns, "Cleaner Energy from the Earth" offers a fresh perspective on the utilization of shale gas as a cleaner fossil fuel alternative. This comprehensive book takes the reader on a captivating journey through the science, technology, and innovation driving shale gas exploration and exploitation towards a greener future. Whether you're a seasoned industry professional, a student, or a curious reader, this book provides a comprehensive and accessible resource for all levels of expertise.
Unconventional Tight Reservoir Simulation: Theory, Technology and Practice
by Qiquan RanThis book systematically introduces readers to the simulation theory and techniques of multiple media for unconventional tight reservoirs. It summarizes the macro/microscopic heterogeneities; the features of multiscale multiple media; the characteristics of complex fluid properties; the occurrence state of continental tight oil and gas reservoirs in China; and the complex flow characteristics and coupled production mechanism under unconventional development patterns. It also discusses the simulation theory of multiple media for unconventional tight oil and gas reservoirs; mathematic model of flow through discontinuous multiple media; geological modeling of discrete multiscale multiple media; and the simulation of multiscale, multiphase flow regimes and multiple media. In addition to the practical application of simulation and software for unconventional tight oil and gas, it also explores the development trends and prospects of simulation technology. The book is of interest to scientific researchers and technicians engaged in the development of oil and gas reservoirs, and serves as a reference resource for advanced graduate students in fields related to petroleum.
Unconventional Water Resources
by Manzoor Qadir Vladimir Smakhtin Sasha Koo-Oshima Edeltraud GuentherThe world is faced with a growing number of complex and interconnected challenges. Water is among the top 5 global risks in terms of impacts, which would be far reaching beyond socio-economic challenges, impacting livelihoods and wellbeing of the people.As freshwater resources and population densities are unevenly distributed across the world, some regions and countries are already water scarce. Water scarcity is expected to intensify in regions like the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), which has 6% of the global population, but only 1% of the world’s freshwater resources. Climate change adds to this complexity as it is leading to rainfall uncertainty and extended droughts periods, mostly in arid areas.Increasing water scarcity is now recognized as a major cause of conflict, social unrest and migration and at the same time water is increasingly considered as an instrument for international cooperation to achieve sustainable development. Tapping and assessing sustainably every available option in water-scarce areas is needed as pressure continues to build on limited water resources.The stark fact is that conventional water provisioning approaches relying on snowfall, rainfall and river runoff are not enough to meet growing freshwater demand in water-scarce areas. Water-scarce countries need a radical re-think of water resource planning and management that includes the creative exploitation of a growing set of viable but unconventional water resources for food production, livelihoods, ecosystems, climate change adaption, and sustainable development. Unconventional water resources are generated as a by-product of specialized processes; need suitable pre-use treatment; require pertinent on-farm management when used for irrigation; or result from a special technology to collect/access water.
Uncovering the Hidden Harvest: Valuation Methods for Woodland and Forest Resources
by Martin K Luckert Bruce M CampbellForests and woodlands provide an enormous range of goods and services to society, from timber and firewood to medicinal plants, watershed protection, destinations for tourists and sacred sites. Only when these are understood and valued can forests and their resources be properly managed and conserved. This work shows how the complicated network of benefits can be untangled and sets out the different approaches needed to value them. It covers the analysis of plant-based markets, non-market valuation and decision frameworks such as cost-benefit analysis.
Undecidability, Uncomputability, and Unpredictability (The Frontiers Collection)
by Anthony Aguirre Zeeya Merali David SloanFor a brief time in history, it was possible to imagine that a sufficiently advanced intellect could, given sufficient time and resources, in principle understand how to mathematically prove everything that was true. They could discern what math corresponds to physical laws, and use those laws to predict anything that happens before it happens. That time has passed. Gödel’s undecidability results (the incompleteness theorems), Turing’s proof of non-computable values, the formulation of quantum theory, chaos, and other developments over the past century have shown that there are rigorous arguments limiting what we can prove, compute, and predict. While some connections between these results have come to light, many remain obscure, and the implications are unclear. Are there, for example, real consequences for physics — including quantum mechanics — of undecidability and non-computability? Are there implications for our understanding of the relations between agency, intelligence, mind, and the physical world? This book, based on the winning essays from the annual FQXi competition, contains ten explorations of Undecidability, Uncomputability, and Unpredictability. The contributions abound with connections, implications, and speculations while undertaking rigorous but bold and open-minded investigation of the meaning of these constraints for the physical world, and for us as humans.
Under a Crimson Sun: Prospects for Life in a Red Dwarf System
by David S. StevensonGliese 581 is a red dwarf star some 20.3 light years from Earth. Red dwarfs are among the most numerous stars in the galaxy, and they sport diverse planetary systems. At magnitude 10, Gliese 581 is visible to amateur observers but does not stand out. So what makes this star so important? It is that professional observers have confirmed that it has at least four planets orbiting it, and in 2009, Planet d was described in the letters of The Astrophysical Journal as "the first confirmed exoplanet that could support Earth-like life." Under a Crimson Sun looks at the nature of red dwarf systems such as Gliese as potential homes for life. Realistically, what are prospects for life on these distant worlds? Could life evolve and survive there? How do these planetary surfaces and geology evolve? How would life on a red dwarf planet differ from life on Earth? And what are the implications for finding further habitable worlds in our galaxy? Stevenson provides readers with insight into the habitability of planets and how this changes as time progresses and the central star evolves. Explore with him in this engaging, fascinating book the possibilities for finding life, from bacteria to more complex and even intelligent organisms, on red dwarf system planets.
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future
by Elizabeth KolbertThe Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity&’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it? That man should have dominion &“over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth&” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it&’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world's rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a "super coral" that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth.One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. In The Sixth Extinction, she explored the ways in which our capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now she examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face.
Under Corporate Skies: A Struggle Between People, Place, and Profit
by Erin Brockovich Martin Brueckner Dyann RossRelating the story of a tiny town pitted against a strong corporation, this account strives to voice the concerns of local communities when they come into conflict with corporate profits. With the help of Erin Brockovich, the small town of Yarloop in Western Australia is fighting its powerful neighbor, Alcoa World Alumina. Their struggle is over social, health, and environmental concerns surrounding Alcoa’s Wagerup alumina refinery. The stories told here are shared by communities around the world amidst ongoing industrialization and resultant collisions between social and economic interests. Depicting life under corporate influence, this study explicitly illustrates that profits matter—but not more than people and place.
Under Michigan: The Story of Michigan's Rocks and Fossils (Great Lakes Books Series)
by Charles Ferguson BarkerMost people recognize Michigan by its mitten-shaped Lower Peninsula and the Great Lakes embracing the state. Underneath the earth's surface, however, is equally distinctive evidence of an exciting history. Michigan rests on sedimentary rocks that reach down into the earth's crust more than fourteen thousand feet--a depth three-and-a-half times deeper than the Grand Canyon. Within these layers of rock rest all sorts of ancient fossils and minerals that date back to the eras when tropical seas spread across Michigan and hot volcanoes flung molten rock into its skies--long before mile-thick glaciers bulldozed over Michigan and plowed through ancient river valleys to form the Great Lakes.Under Michigan is the first book for young readers about the geologic history of the state and the structure scientists call the Michigan Basin. A fun and educational journey, Under Michigan explores Earth's geological past, taking readers far below the familiar sights of Michigan and nearby places to explain the creation of minerals and fossils and show where they can be found in the varying layers of rock. Readers will learn about the hard rock formations surrounding Michigan and also discover the tall mountain ridges hidden at the bottom of the Great Lakes. With beautiful illustrations by author Charles Ferguson Barker, a glossary of scientific terms, and charming page to keep field notes, Under Michigan is a wonderful resource for young explorers to use at home, in school, or on a trip across Michigan.