Book description
This book is for geoscience students taking introductory or
intermediate-level courses in igneous petrology, to help develop key
skills (and confidence) in identifying igneous minerals, interpreting
and allocating appropriate names to unknown rocks presented to them. The
book thus serves, uniquely, both as a conventional course text
and
as a practical laboratory manual.
Following an introduction reviewing
igneous nomenclature, each chapter addresses a specific compositional
category of magmatic rocks, covering definition, mineralogy, eruption/
emplacement processes, textures and crystallization processes,
geotectonic distribution, geochemistry, and aspects of magma
genesis. One chapter is devoted to phase equilibrium experiments and
magma evolution; another introduces pyroclastic volcanology. Each
chapter concludes with exercises, with the answers being provided at
the end of the book.
Appendices provide a summary of techniques and optical data for
microscope mineral identification, an introduction to petrographic
calculations, a glossary of petrological terms, and a list of symbols
and units. The book is richly illustrated with line drawings,
monochrome pictures and colour plates.
Additional resources for this book can be found at: http://www. wiley. com/go/gill/igneous.
Robin Gill
has lectured in igneous petrology and geochemistry at the University of
London for 22 years, and before that held postdoctoral posts at the
Universities of Manchester, Western Ontario and Oxford. He is author of
Chemical Fundamentals of Geology
(Springer) and editor of
Modern Analytical Geochemistry
(Addison Wesley Longman).
