Earth as an Evolving Planetary System

"Earth as an Evolving Planetary System" presents the key topics and questions relating to the evolution of the Earth's crust and mantle over the last four billion years. It examines the role of plate tectonics in the geological past via geological evidence and proposed plate reconstruction. Kent Condie synthesizes data from the fields of oceanography, geophysics, planetology, and geochemistry to examine the key topics and questions relating to the evolution of the Earth's crust and mantle. This volume provides a substantial update to Condie's established text, "Plate Tectonics and Crustal Evolution, 4E". It emphasizes the interactive nature of various components of the Earth system on time scales of tens to hundreds of millions of years, and how these interactions have affected the history of the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere. Providing new insight on interaction and evolution of Earth system, it examines the role of catastrophic events in Earth's history and contains a new section on the evolution of the mantle.