A Comprehensive review of modern stratigraphic methods. The stratigraphic record is the major repository of information about the geological history of Earth, a record stretching back for nearly 4 billion years. Stratigraphic studies fill out our planet's plate-tectonic history with the details of paleogeography, past climates, and the record of evolution, and stratigraphy is at the heart of the effort to find and exploit fossil fuel resources. Modern stratigraphic methods are now able to provide insights into past geological events and processes on time scales with unprecedented accuracy and precision, and have added much to our understanding of global tectonic and climatic processes. It has taken 200 years and a modern revolution to bring all the necessary developments together to create the modern, dynamic science that this book sets out to describe. Stratigraphy now consists of a suite of integrated concepts and methods, several of which have considerable predictive and interpretive power. The new, integrated, dynamic science that Stratigraphy has become is now inseparable from what were its component parts, including sedimentology, chronostratigraphy, and the broader aspects of basin analysis.
"Miall (Univ. of Toronto, Canada) ranks among the most influential of modern stratigraphers, and in the present volume he provides a complete summation of all the advances in the science up to the present day. ... Miall finishes with an in-depth chapter on the current status of the measurement of geologic time and future potential in the field. An extensive list of references follows each chapter. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers/faculty, and professionals/practitioners." (C. W. Dimmick, Choice, Vol. 53 (12), September, 2016)