Environmental Magnetism: Principles and Applications of Enviromagnetics

As the authors state in their preface to Environmental Magnetism: Principles and Applications of Enviromagnetics, this is a quite new science. It began from disparate beginnings involving interdisciplinary approaches to studying young sediment records to tease out a history of past but geologically recent global change. Today the subject has blossomed into an important, vibrant field that envelops many aspects of the geosciences and beyond. It is a true delight to review this book, and not just because Subir Banerjee has done such an outstanding job of providing in the forward, as he states, “a welcoming invitation for the reader to the contents of the book and its special character.” It is indeed of special character, written by two highly accomplished scholars who have devoted a considerable amount of their research attention to linking the magnetic record of geologic materials to Earth processes. The first book on this subject, Environmental Magnetism by R.Thompson and F. Oldfield,was published in 1986 and provided the community with a compilation of several applications oriented toward environmental studies using rock and paleomagnetic approaches. Evans and Heller's volume is quite different.