FOREWORD


If one could drain the world's oceans and remove their sediment cover, you would quickly realize that the majority of the Earth's surface is covered with lava flows. Although the human race has lived in close contact with volcanic activity since our early origins in the African Rift Valley, only recently have we begun to comprehend how volcanically active our planet really is. Even more recently, exploration of our solar system shows us that volcanism has played and continues to play an important role in the early genesis and subsequent evolution of both the planets and moons within our solar system and beyond.

Given our growing awareness of the importance of volcanism to the past, present, and future history of earth and its celestial partners, the publication of the Encyclopedia of Volcanoes is clearly needed and appropriate at this time. Thanks to the efforts of Editor-in-Chief Dr. Haraldur Sigurdsson and his highly qualified Associate Editors and contributing authors, the Encyclopedia of Volcanoes is drawn from a vast and enlarging database.

I was first introduced to volcanoes by Dr. Sigurdsson in the early 1970s. At the time, I was preparing for the first manned exploration of the Mid-Ocean Ridge during Project FAMOUS. This was a critical time in the earth sciences when our community sought to better understand this mighty undersea mountain range and the important role its volcanic and tectonic processes played in the then newly evolving concept of Plate Tectonics and Seafloor Spreading.

I vividly remember traveling with Haraldur to his native country of Iceland, which sits astride of the Ridge. There we scaled one volcano after another including Surtsey, Eldfell, and Krafla. That introduction to terrestrial volcanism prepared me for the many years I would spend investigating undersea volcanic processes.

Those efforts eventually led to the discovery of hydrothermal vents in 1977 and the exotic life forms that live on the internal energy of the earth through a process we now know as chemosynthesis. That effort was followed in 1979 with our discovery of high temperature "black smokers" and a clearer understanding of the chemistry of the world's oceans.

Since that time the study of volcanism has expanded rapidly, branching out to embrace many fields of research. As a result, the study of volcanism is no longer an isolated field of research but one closely linked to other disciplines and areas of research including the chemistry of the world's oceans and atmosphere, the creation of important mineral assemblages, the role volcanism has played in the origin of life as well as its negative impact upon biological evolution, and most recently its impact upon mankind itself. The Encyclopedia of Volcanoes has been an immense undertaking involving the collective efforts of over 100 international experts on the subject, resulting in a 1000-page volume broken down into 82 chapters.

Clearly, this volume is the most comprehensive presentation on this subject, a work important to those in the field as well as others seeking a broader understanding of this subject.

Dr. Robert D. Ballard
President, Institute for Exploration
and Emeritus of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

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