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COAL AND PEAT FIRES: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE, Volumes 1-4, is a comprehensive collection of diverse and pioneering work in coal and peat-fires research conducted by scientists and engineers around the world. It contains hundreds of magnificent color photographs, tables, charts, and multimedia presentations. Explanatory text is balanced by visually impressive graphics.
This work is devoted to all aspects of coal and peat fires. It contains a wealth of data for the research scientist, while remaining comprehensible to the general public interested in these catastrophic fires. Amateur and professional mineralogists, petrologists, coal geologists, geophysicists, engineers, environmental and remote sensing scientists, and anyone interested or involved in the technical aspects of coal and peat mining, coal and peat fires, and the effects of burning from human health to combustion metamorphism will find these four volumes useful. Although the technical level varies, the science-attentive audience will be able to understand and enjoy major portions of this work.
The four volumes are also a valuable source of information about the socio-economic and geo-environmental impacts of coal and peat fires. As an example, the mineral and select-gas analyses presented will be of great interest to environmental scientists, academicians, people employed in industry, and anyone interested in minerals and pollution.
The contents of this work can be used to design and teach courses in environmental science and engineering, coal geology, mineralogy, metamorphic processes, remote sensing, mining engineering, fire science and engineering, etc. A variety of case studies on a country by country basis, including prehistoric and historic fires, encompass a wide range of geoscience disciplines. These include mineralogy, petrology, geophysics, engineering, geochemical thermodynamics, medical geology, numerical modeling, and remote sensing – all making this work a cutting edge publication in "global coal and peat-fires science."
Volume 1 before you contains 19 chapters illustrated in full color [see Contents tab]. Volume 2 presents hundreds of color photos of coal and peat fires burning around the world as well as multimedia presentations that include movies, radio talk shows, and presentations given at professional meetings. Volume 3 presents case studies about fires on a country by country basis. Volume 4 is devoted to all aspects of peat and peat fires.
The editors of this four volume book work believe that scientists and engineers as well as the general public will find that the information presented herein reveals the complexity of coal and peat-fires science, the effects of these fires, and useful methods for investigating them. We hope that the information presented will create global awareness about these fires and trigger new research ideas and methods for studying them, accelerate efforts to mitigate and extinguish them, and build a better-living environment in mining areas around the world.
Glenn B. Stracher
Anupma Prakash
Ellina V. Sokol
Editors-in-Chief
 Dr. Glenn B. Stracher is Professor of Geology and Physics at East Georgia College, University System of Georgia, Swainsboro, Georgia, USA. After receiving his M.S. in Geology and a Ph.D. in Geology and Engineering Mechanics from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, he served as a Lady Davis Scholar at the Institute of Earth Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Dr. Stracher is the former chair of the Geological Society of America’s Coal Geology Division and serves on the society’s External Awards Committee. He is the co-author of three chemical thermodynamics books, published in English and Japanese and taught graduate level courses in this subject at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. In 2010, he was named a University System of Georgia “Shining Star,” by the state’s Board of Regents, for excellence in research and teaching.
Trained as a structural geologist, mineralogist, and metamorphic petrologist, the main focus of his research since 1995; and for which he is internationally known, has been coal fires burning around the world. In addition to numerous peer-reviewed publications about coal fires, he has convened coal-fires symposia with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Geological Society of America (GSA), and led four GSA National, coal-fires field trips. Dr. Stracher is the editor of the Geological Society of America book, Geology of Coal Fires: Case Studies from Around the World. He also edited the International Journal of Coal Geology special publication, Coal Fires Burning Around the World: A Global Catastrophe.
Dr. Stracher appears in two National Geographic Channel (NGC) movies about coal-fires: Wild Fires, part of a seven part NGC series entitled Built for Destruction, and the more recent movie, Underground Inferno, which has won several international film festival awards.
CLICK HERE for details about his research projects, teaching, publications, and education.
 Dr. Anupma Prakash is Professor of Remote Sensing Geology and Geophysics at the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska - Fairbanks, USA. After receiving her M.Sc. degree in Geology from Lucknow University, India, and a Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from the Indian Institute of Technology - Roorkee, India, she moved to the Netherlands to work for the International Institute of Geo-information Surveys and Earth Sciences (ITC), Enschede, The Netherlands. She is internationally recognized for her research on the use of remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) techniques for investigating surface and underground coal-mine fires. Her coal-fires research involves fire detection, mapping, monitoring, depth estimation, characterization, and quantitative estimation of environmental impacts.
Since 2002, Dr. Prakash has used remote sensing for mapping Earth surface composition and change due to climate change and anthropogenic activities. She serves on the thermal infrared science working group for NASA’s planned HyspIRI satellite mission.
CLICK HERE for details about her research projects, teaching, publications, education, and outreach activities.
 Dr. Ellina V. Sokol is head of the combustion metamorphism research group at the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk. She received her M.Sc. degree in Geochemistry at Novosibirsk State University and a Ph.D. in Metamorphic Petrology from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Her primary areas of research are the mineralogy, petrogenesis, environmental geochemistry, and metamorphic facies associated with combustion metamorphism due to burning coal and hydrocarbon gases. Her work includes the first published studies about burnt rocks from spoil heaps in the coal basins of the Urals, ancient coal fires and related combustion metamorphic rocks of SW Siberia, and combustion metamorphic events associated with hydrocarbon, gas-generated mud volcanic provinces of the Black Sea and Middle East. She is the co-author of over 80 scientific articles and 4 books.
CLICK HERE for details about the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. CLICK HERE for additional information.
 Dr. Guillermo Rein is a Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and a 2010-11 Royal Academy of Engineering/Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow. He received M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, USA, after completing thesis work about smoldering combustion modeling, sponsored by NASA.
Dr. Rein is an internationally recognized expert on smoldering combustion phenomena and his research covers a wide range of multidisciplinary topics, using both modeling and experimental approaches, in four main areas: smoldering fires in the Earth system, reactive solid materials, fire dynamics in the built environment, and wildfires.
CLICK HERE for details about the research projects and publications of his group.
 Dr. Rudiger Gens is a remote sensing scientist at the Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF), Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska - Fairbanks, USA. He earned his M.Sc. degree in Surveying and Mapping and a Doctoral Degree in Engineering from the University of Hannover, Germany. His research specialization is in the processing and application of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and Interferometric SAR (InSAR) data.
At the ASF, Dr. Gens has developed a variety of software tools for making SAR data more accessible, provided technical support to a large remote sensing community, and used satellite data to advance scientific understanding of the processes that guide changes in Arctic landscapes.
Dr. Gens is also a cooperating faculty in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at UAF, where he teaches courses in the principles and applications of SAR and InSAR. In addition, he offers customized training courses and conference workshops. Dr. Gens is an associate editor of the International Journal of Remote Sensing, a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society, and co-chair of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) VII/2 working group on SAR interferometry.
CLICK HERE for details about his research projects, teaching, publications, education, and outreach activities. |
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