A textbook on Alpine and Glacial Geology


Bruce Railsback has generated a photocopy-and-bind textbook called Alpine and Glacial Geology.  Its immediate purpose is to meet the needs of a course called "Alpine and Glacial Geology" in the University of New Orleans-Innsbruck summer program.  That course is open to all students, with no prerequisites, but covers the advanced topics of alpine geology and glacial geology.  The book is therefore designed to cover sufficient fundamentals of geology to get students started and then to cover its two main topics in some detail.  The book has an emphasis on Tirol, the setting of the course, but not such an emphasis to preclude use of the book elsewhere.

      Here's the table of contents:

      - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
            Preface I: This book
            Preface II: Tirol
      - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    Part I. Fundamentals of Geology
            1. Geologic Concepts
            2. Minerals
            3. Igneous Rocks
            4. Sedimentary Rocks
            5. Coarse-grained Sedimentary Rocks, and Breccias
            6. Metamorphic Rocks
            7. Weathering, Erosion, and Mass Wasting
            8. Geological Structures (a.k.a. Structural Geology)
            9. Plate Tectonics and Mantle Flow
      - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    Part II. Mountains and Orogeny
            10. Orogenic Processes
            11. The Tirolean Alps
            12. The Inn Valley
            13. The Southern Appalachians
            14. The Himalayas
            15. Circum-Pacific Orogens
            16. Orogenic Generalizations
      - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    Part III. Glaciers and Glaciation
            17. Fundamental Principles
            18. Alpine Glaciation
            19. Continental Glaciation
            20. Glaciation through Time

    Part IV. Summary & More
            21. Big Mountains and Big Glaciers
            22. Alpine Ecology

            Appendix A: A List of Noteworthy Mountain Peaks
            Appendix B: A Tirolean-American Earth Scientist's Glossary
            Appendix C: Possible Exam Questions
            Index
      - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The book consists of 194 pages. Each relatively short chapter is followed by figures for that chapter.

The copyright page has the following statement:

Alpine and Glacial Geology - second edition (c) 2008 by L. Bruce Railsback.   All text and illustrations in this book have been produced by L. Bruce Railsback or are documents in the public domain under the copyright laws of the United States of America.  The author grants permission for reproduction of this book for instructional purposes and personal use, so long as copies are sold for no more than the cost of reproduction and binding.  Unbound originals for photocopying may be obtained at cost from the author.

The last sentence of that copyright statement is now out of date: Persons wanting a copy can download the huge 342 MB pdf file of the entire book or can download pdf file of the four intervals separated by lines of dashes above:
          Introductory materials (18 MB)
          Fundamentals of Geology (127 MB)
          Mountains and Orogeny (116 MB)
          Glaciers and Glaciation, and closing materials (80 MB)

For EES 2096 students, there's a pdf of the first few pages, without figures, that they can and should read before the first class meeting.

 

e-mail to Bruce Railsback (rlsbk@gly.uga.edu)
Railsback's main web page
UGA Geology Department web page
 

 

 

 

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