In the early 1970s, Bill Ganus and I developed an environmental geology course at San Diego State University. The growing awareness of the environment and the availability of good textbooks made it natural to offer a general education course looking at geological hazards, resource utilization and disposal, and intelligent planning in concert with the environment. The course had moderately successful enrollments, chugging along at 25 to 35 students per semester for over a decade.

In 1987, Tom Rockwell and I were discussing the environmental geology course and speculating on why it never attracted large enrollments. We agreed that the natural disasters portions of the course were the most popular. So, I formally changed the name of the course to "Natural Disasters" but did not change the course description or textbook, or advertise the change in any way. Yet almost instantly, students reading through the fine print of semester course offerings saw the "Natural Disasters" listing and enrollments skyrocketed. Now we offer multiple sections with more than 4,500 classroom seats per academic year and still do not satisfy demand.

San Diego State University students do not have to take Natural Disasters. They can select from over 30 courses among 10 departments with offerings such as Biology of Sex, Evolution, Origin of Life, The Oceans, Dinosaurs, and Confronting AIDS. But more students opt for Natural Disasters than any other course. If your department could benefit from higher enrollments of non-major students, I strongly recommend offering a Natural Disasters course. Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other high-energy processes of our active Earth affect children's lives. As students, they want to understand why these natural disasters happen. The students' high level of interest can be channeled by the instructor into some significant learning about science.

This book focuses on natural disasters: how the normal processes of the Earth concentrate their energies and deal heavy blows to humans and their structures. It largely ignores the numerous case histories describing human actions and resultant environmental responses; these topics are left to the excellent textbooks on environmental geology. Nor does this book address resource extraction, utilization, and disposal; these subjects are covered by fine textbooks on earth resources, minerals, energy, soils, and water. This book is concerned with how the natural world operates and, in so doing, kills and maims humans and destroys their works.

Throughout the book, certain themes are maintained:

• Energy sources underlying disasters
• Plate tectonics and climate change
• Earth processes operating in rock, water, and atmosphere
• Significance of geologic time
• Complexities of multiple variables operating simultaneously
• Detailed and readable case histories

The primary organization of the book is based on an energy theme. Chapter 1 leads off with data describing death and destruction, then examines the energy sources underlying disasters: 1) Earth's internal energy from its formative impacts and continuing decay of radioactive elements; 2) gravity; 3) eternal energy from the Sun, and; 4) impacts with asteroids and comets.

Disasters fueled by Earth's internal energy are addressed in Chapters 2 through 7 and are organized on a plate-tectonics theme. Chapter 2 provides the basic description of plate tectonics and its relationship to earthquakes. Chapter 3 covers the basic principles of earthquake geology, seismology and tsunami, and assumes no prior knowledge. Chapter 4 uses plate tectonics and historic and prehistoric records to explain earthquakes along western North America. Chapter 5 examines the history and potential for earthquakes throughout the rest of North America. The intent is to cover every geographic area and major historic earthquake. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 discuss volcanoes; their characteristic magmas are organized around the 3 Vs - viscosity, volatiles, and volume. Eruptive behaviors are related to plate-tectonic setting. As throughout, case histories are employed to enliven the text.

Disasters powered primarily by gravity are covered in Chapter 8 on mass movements. Many types are discussed and illustrated, from falls to flows and slides to subsidence.

Disasters fueled by the external energy of the Sun are examined in Chapters 9 through 13. Chapter 9 looks at climate change and provides some basis for succeeding chapters. Climate principles governing energy transfer over time scales of millions, thousands, hundreds, and several years are discussed. The time focus shrinks through the chapter, leading to Chapter 10 on severe weather phenomena, such as thunderstorms, lightning, and tornadoes. Chapter 11 examines hurricanes and the coastline. The emphasis on water continues in Chapter 12 on floods and how human activities increase flood damage. Chapter 13 on fire examines the liberation of ancient sunlight captured by photosynthesis and stored in organic material.

Before moving to the fourth energy source (impacts), Chapter 14 examines the great dyings encased in the fossil record. The intent is to document the greatest of all natural disasters and to use multiple variables in analyzing their causes. Specific mass extinctions are examined using causative factors, such as continental unification and separation, climate change, flood-basalt volcanism, sea-level rise and fall, impacts, biologic processes, and the role of humans in the latest mass dying. Chapter 15 examines impact mechanisms in greater detail and includes plans to protect Earth from future impacts.

Chapter 16 looks at population growth, the unprecedented exponential increase in the human population.

There is a lot of material in this book, probably too much to cover in one semester. But the broad range of natural disasters topics allows each instructor to select those chapters that cover their interests and local hazards.

For the fourth edition, all chapters have been revised and updated, and 24 new pieces of line art, 16 new photos, and 19 new tables have been added. Changes include major reorganizations and expansions. Chapter 1 has more physical and economic data on disasters and hazards, and more discussion of energy flow. Chapters 6 and 7 on volcanism are unified into a continuous sequence based on plate tectonics and magma characteristics with eruptions explained using the 3 Vs - viscosity, volatiles, and volume. Chapter 13 on fire has added 7 new figures and 5 new tables on wildland fire data and how fires work. Chapter 9 on climate change has new sections on the last thousand years, and on global warming. Chapter 10 on severe weather has expanded discussion of energy flow and how thunderstorms work.

Supplements

Online Learning Center at http://www.mhhe.com/abbott4e

This site gives you the opportunity to further explore topics presented in the book using the Internet. The site contains interactive quizzing with immediate feedback, interactive key term flashcards, web links, a career center, and more.

Online Learning Center at http://www.mhhe.com/abbott4e

Take advantage of the instructor's manual, PowerPoint lecture outlines, and access to PageOut - McGraw-Hill's course management tool.

Digital Content Manager CD-ROM

This CD-ROM contains all of the line art, photographs, and tables from the text to make customizing your multimedia presentation easy. You can organize figures in any order you want; add labels, lines, and your own artwork; integrate materials from other sources; edit and annotate lecture notes, and then have the option of placing your media lecture into a presentation program, such as PowerPoint.

Instructor's Testing and Resource CD-ROM

This cross-platform CD-ROM provides a wealth of resources for the instructor. Supplements featured on this CD-ROM include a computerized test bank utilizing Brownstone Diploma ® testing software to quickly create customized exams. This user-friendly program allows instructors to search for questions by topic, format, or difficulty level; edit existing questions or add new ones; and scramble questions and answer keys for multiple versions of the same test.

Other assets on this CD are grouped within easy-to-use folders. The Instructor's Manual and Test Item File are available in both Word and PDF formats. Word files of the test bank are included for those instructors who prefer to work outside of the test-generator software.

I am deeply appreciative of the help given by others to make this book a reality. Many of the figures were drafted or drawn by Rene Wagemakers of San Diego State University. Rene's talent and ready willingness to help are invaluable. The photograph collection in the book is immeasurably improved by the aerial photographs generously given by John S. Shelton, the greatest geologist photographer of them all. The collection of John Shelton photographs in this book is second in number only to his classic book Geology Illustrated.

I am indebted to other geologists who provided photographs: Alan Mayo of GeoPhoto Publishing Company on the Winter Park sinkhole of Tucson flooding; Gerald G. Kuhn of San Diego from his space shuttle image collection; Michael W. Hart of San Diego on mass movements; Al Boost of Caltrans on the San Fernando earthquake; Peter Weigand of California State University Northridge, Greg Davis of University of Southern California, and Kerry Sieh of Caltech on the Northridge earthquake; Anne Jennings of the University of Colorado on climate; José Aguirre on the Berkeley fire; and the photo libraries of the USGS, NOAA, and NASA.

For the first edition several chapters benefited from helpful reviews by San Diego State University colleagues: Michael J. Walawender on volcanism, J. David Archibald and Richard H. Miller on great dyings, and David L. Kimbrough on impacts.

The quality of the book was significantly improved by the insights provided by comments from the following reviewers of the third and earlier editions:

• Judson Ahern, University of Oklahoma
• Wang-Ping Chen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Patrick Colgan, Northeastern University
• Michael Conway, Arizona Western University
• John Dunbar, Baylor University
• Michael Forrest, Rio Hondo Junior College
• Kevin P. Furlong, Pennsylvania State University
• David Gonzales, Fort Lewis College
• Paul K. Grogger, University of Colorado-Colorado Springs
• John Hidore, University of North Carolina-Greensboro
• George Hupper, University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse
• Ernest L. Kern, Southeast Missouri State University
• Alan Lester, University of Colorado
• Jon Nourse, California State Polytechnic University
• Peter Sadler, University of California-Riverside
• Bingming Shen-Tu, Indiana University
• Don Steeples, University of Kansas
• Donald J. Stierman, University of Toledo
• Philip Suckling, University of Northern Iowa

The expanded coverage of volcanoes was much improved by the advice of Victor E. Camp of San Diego State University.

The fourth edition benefited greatly from the detailed reviews of:

• Sandra Allen, Lindenwood University
• Cathy Busby, University of California - Santa Barbara
• Stanley Dart, University of Nebraska-Kearney
• John Dooley, North Hennepin Community College
• John Dunbar, Baylor University
• Sue Morgan, Utah State University - Logan
• Leslie Sonder, Dartmouth College

I am grateful for the help of others at San Diego State University: Jacobe Washburn for his original line drawings, Tony Carrasco for invaluable aid on the computer with photos and live drawings, and Marie Grace for forming many of the tables.

I sincerely appreciate the talents and accomplishments of the McGraw-Hill professionals in Dubuque who took my manuscript and produced it into this book. For the shortcomings that remain in the book, I alone am responsible. I welcome all comments, pro and con, as well as suggested revisions.

Pat Abbott

pabbott@geology.sdsu.edu