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1028 BOOK REVIEWS
that they just about do but your average geologist, even at
graduate level, may well be put off by the maths, especially
as it starts so early (pages 3 and 4) in the opening chapter. In
my opinion at least some of the mathematical treatment of
the opening chapter could have been best avoided or perhaps,
better still, confined to an appendix at the end. Throughout
the rest of the book the mathematical side is downplayed and
I think as a result makes the material more accessible rather
than less so.
The book follows a slightly quirky path with chapters on
Geomagnetism, Rock Magnetism, Magnetic Prospecting, Pa-
laeomagnetism, Magnetic Fabrics, The Magnetic Signature
of the Earth’s Crust, Magnetic Chronology, Environmental
Magnetism and finally a brief history of the study of
magnetism. The organization of the book might have been
better served by bringing the magnetic prospecting and
crustal magnetism sections together so that one led on from
the other but the rights and wrongs of any such organization
is always subjective.
I think one of the highlights of the book is the extremely
good use of Italian examples to explain the various topics
under discussion. If nothing else these, perhaps less familiar,
examples will serve as a valuable resource to those teaching
in the broad discipline of geomagnetism. The text is very
well written and I think most readers will find the book quite
readable. However there is a certain quirkiness to it all – some
slightly odd phrasing or the occasional missing word strikes
one quite often, which after a moment’s pause one realises is
due to the fact that the authors’ first language is not English
but in fact does not obscure the authors’ meaning in any
way.
At the end of each chapter the authors provide a brief
set of recommendations for suggested reading and combine
this with a short set of references for figure sources. While
this is not an extensive reference list it does give the
interested reader enough information to begin to follow
up the various topics under discussion. Throughout the
quality of the diagrams is very good with many very
clean, simple line drawings and a limited number of colour
plates.
In the end I think this will become a reference book in
libraries rather than a true textbook for the undergraduate or
graduate geologist. Having said that I would hope it would
become a standard on taught graduate courses in geophysics
where its broad introduction to the diversity of geomagnetism
would serve such readers well.
GraemeK.Taylor
CALDWELL,D.R.,EHLEN,J.&HARMON,R.S.(eds)
2004. Studies in Military Geography and Geology.xiv+
348 pp. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer. Price
Euros 119.95, £79.00, SFr 194.50, US $159.00 (hard
covers). ISBN 1 4020 3104 1.
doi:10.1017/S0016756806002378
More than six decades on from the end of World War Two,
there are few people who have personal experience of warfare
involving conventional battlefields. Apart from low-intensity,
counter-insurgency conflicts, the post-WW2 period, one of
continual conflict somewhere on the planet, has seen not a
single campaign that has pitted large armies on a roughly
equal footing, except occasionally in Korea and Vietnam.
Pitched battles, such as Desert Storm in the first Gulf War,
have been decided by overwhelming air power and surface-
to-surface firepower in a matter of a few hours, irrespective
of ground. So a book on the central role of terrain in
military strategy and tactics is more of historical interest than
looking ahead to battle plans that are dominated by conditions
under foot. Stemming from a conference at the US Military
Academy, West Point in 2003, it is no surprise to find Studies
in Military Geography and Geology dominated by North
American issues from the War of Independence and the Civil
War. But there are vignettes about Hannibal’s invasion of
southern Europe, and the role of German geologists and
geographers in planning the invasion of the Soviet Union
and the aborted invasion of Britain.
That being said, anyone likely to come under fire aims to
seek natural cover, and maintaining supply lines will depend
on whether or not vehicles can become bogged and water
supplies assured. The second is now less appropriate to
armies of the last remaining superpower; millions of litres
of bottled spring water, as well as TV dinners, fly into Iraq.
Yet the first Gulf War was only able to sustain hundreds
of thousands of troops by exploiting a major aquifer in
northern Saudi Arabia from wells drilled to a depth of a
kilometre, and using remote sensing to locate existing wells
in the featureless desert that formed the main battle ground.
Interestingly, the UN military force that is deployed along
the Eritrean–Ethiopian border to observe adherence to the
cease-fire terms at the end of the 1998–2000 war there uses
bottled supplies. Not having drilled wells, they have done
little to restore groundwater supplies in anticipation of the
return of tens of thousands of refugees displaced by the war.
The abortive hunt for Osama bin Laden since the invasion
of Afghanistan in 2002 highlights the tremendous advantage
to small defensive forces of limestone terrain – highly
irregular karst topography and a multitude of caves in which
to hide. There is an interesting parallel account of how the
intricate tropical karst of upland Jamaica – Cockpit Country –
thwarted British forces’ attempts to suppress a guerrilla
force of escaped slaves during the Maroon Wars of 1690–6.
A combination of cordoning the karst terrain from which
the guerrillas operated, deforestation, and guarding the few
surface water supplies enabled the British to contain the
rebellion. Maroon fighters, however, only sought terms after a
measles epidemic weakened their forces. That karstic regions
still worry counter-insurgency forces is emphasized by a
detailed analysis of Afghan limestones. Its scope is from
microscopic and geochemical studies of hand specimens, to
determine which facies are most prone to solution cavities, to
geospatial analysis of lithofacies maps and fracture systems
as a means of predicting where most caves might be. The
outcome was blanket bombing of limestone country close to
the Afghan–Pakistani border, but no significant achievement
of its objectives.
The central political purpose of conventional warfare is to
wreak as much devastation as possible to force opponents to
submit. But in these sensitive times, it seems that armies have
some duties similar to those of mining companies: they are
supposed to protect environment and heritage as best they
can – at least on their training grounds. So there are two
chapters dealing with environmental impact of marching and
movement of armour. In the first, case studies focus on a
bayonet assault course at West Point (has any reader actually
seen news footage of US soldiers with fixed bayonets?).
Equally earnest is the account of how vehicle tracks on
surfaces coated by desert pavement last for tens if not
hundreds of years, from studies of US arid-land training sites.
To this day, the El Alamein battlefield lays out the to-ing and
fro-ing of the Afrika Corps and the Eighth Army. And what
of the impact on archaeology, for which US legislation has
BOOK REVIEWS 1029
extremely stringent rules? Yes, there is a chapter on assessing
such impacts, no doubt being applied to the world’s densest
area of archaeological sites from the Last Glacial Maximum
to the first civilizations – on the Tigris–Euphrates plains.
Studies in Military Geography and Geology is not as
lugubrious as it could be: no studies about means of detecting
mass burials (oddly nothing about finding buried weapons
of mass destruction either), the geochemical dispersion of
dust from depleted uranium projectiles, or contamination of
water resources by white phosphorus. Apart from military
historians, I think a likely readership might well be the
irregular forces which modern warfare seeks to suppress,
for they are exploiters of terrain and cover par excellence.
S. A. Drury
KENRICK,P.&DAV I S , P. 2004. Fossil Plants. 216 pp.
London: The Natural History Museum. Price £16.95
(paperback). ISBN 0 565 09176 X.
doi:10.1017/S0016756807003226
Popular books on fossil plants are relatively few and far
between. This offering from the Natural History Museum is
welcome being both well illustrated and authoritative. The
book is arranged into eight chapters following a time line in
general but also incorporating other themes. We start ‘in the
beginning’ with a brief review of life in the Precambrian and
into the early Palaeozoic with the spread of life onto land.
This features the Rhynie Chert, which also starts the second
chapter on the Devonian. In some respects this account is
an opportunity missed as no reconstruction of the hot spring
setting nor community is given and highlights a weak point
in referencing. A link to the University of Aberdeen Rhynie
website would have been a good idea. The rise of the seed
plants and first trees are also covered.
Chapter 3 is on forests and here we lose some of the time
element. There are many interesting stories and anecdotes
but a reader has little chance in following up the stories
as referencing is only to a few textbooks. Aspects of plant
preservation are dealt with here but I would like to have seen
some illustrations. There is little mention of the significance
of charcoal, and fire receives scant attention. Chapter 4 is on
coal, which deals mainly with Carboniferous peat-forming
plants. There is little discussion here of the evolution of
peat-forming vegetation which is a pity considering coals
are found worldwide in all periods from the Devonian.
Chapter 5 is on measuring the past. This covers aspects
such as plants as thermometers and proxies for CO2but
illustrations such as of the cuticle with stomata could have
been larger, clearer and annotated. Chapter 6 is on plant life
through the ages. This looks at changing vegetation through
time and considers evolution and extinction. A reconstruction
of Gondwana is given but the changing pattern of the
continents and biome development could have been given
more prominence.
Chapter 7 on plants and animals deals with both
plant–arthropod and plant–vertebrate interactions. Whilst
interesting, it could have been improved with some good line
drawings and a better sense of the evolution of interactions.
The final chapter is on the rise of the flowering plants. I
am sure that angiosperm palaeobotanists would like to see
more detail and illustrations and to some extent I have some
sympathy.
Overall the strength of the book is that it is well written
and not expensive, but better illustrations could have been
used in many places and the lack of websites and detailed
references makes its use more limited. Despite this I think
that all interested in the evolution of life should have a copy.
Andrew C. Scott
ALLEN,M.R.,GOFFEY,G.P.,MORGAN, R.K.&
WALKER, I. M. (eds) 2006. The Deliberate Search
for the Stratigraphic Trap. Geological Society Special
Publication no. 254. v +304 pp. London, Bath:
Geological Society of London. Price £75.00, US
$135.00; GSL members’ price £37.50, US $68.00;
AAPG/SEPM/GSA/RAS/EFG/PESGB members’ price
£45.00, US $81.00 (hard covers). ISBN 1 86239 192 0.
doi:10.1017/S0016756807003184
This book results from a conference, ‘The Deliberate Search
for the Stratigraphic Trap – Where Are We Now?’, held in
London in 2004. In their introduction the editors state that
‘in-depth understanding of analogue fields ...and ...deep
insights ...were generally not well demonstrated’. Judging
from the published record this seems fair comment. The
contents, which could in several cases have been refereed
more rigorously, fall into four groups.
The first, authored by consultants, comprises three papers
dealing with corporate strategy, organization and procedures
for successful pursuit of stratigraphic plays, based largely on
global lookbacks in which prices and evolving technologies
might have figured more prominently. The approach in all is
from a prospect portfolio perspective; conclusions are now
surely fairly well known but at least stress the need to fund
and conserve appropriate levels of long-term information
gathering to steepen expectation curves. Young professionals
and senior managers alike should heed what is surely a cri
de coeur from Binns that ‘frequent re-organizations ...divert
attention away from the technical process’.
The second, authored by staff of the Department of Trade
and Industry and the British Geological Survey, contains
four papers promoting the potential for stratigraphic traps in
various regions of the UK Continental Shelf. To what extent
the ‘leads’ illustrated are calibrated evaluations or conceptual
arm-waving is unclear.
The third, authored by industry staff, includes three case
history papers. That by Godo is an informative integration
of sedimentology, sequence stratigraphy and rock properties
employed in pursuit of an amplitude-supported gas play in
the Miocene of the Gulf of Mexico. The account of the pre-
discovery evaluation of Buzzard in the UK North Sea allows
British Gas staff to give themselves a well-deserved pat on
the back. The promotional story on the Indonesian rift plays
sets out a simple play concept using only 2D seismic data
and does not discuss rock properties.
The fourth, authored by academics, is a mixed bag of four
papers. It includes an exhaustive geometrical classification
of seals with no reference to their sedimentology or rock
properties and geometrical evaluation of the pinch-out of
turbidites against a confining slope without sedimentological
insight. The paper on sand ‘extrudites’ nicely mixes
seismic and field descriptions of these volumetrically minor
stratigraphic curios. An interesting discussion of visual
cognition pitfalls in seismic display has general application.
Exploration acreage is too valuable to evaluate solely
in terms of structural closures; the more so as high oil
prices seem here to stay. Interpreters need to conceptualize
all possible closed contours of hydrocarbon fluid potential
at spatially complex reservoir/seal interfaces in a context
of time-variant access to charge, structural deformation,