Glacial Processes, Past And Present: Special Paper 337 of the Geological Society of America; D.M. Mickelson, J.W. Attig (Eds.); Geological Society of America, Boulder, CO, USA, 1999, vi+203 pages, Paperback, ISBN 0-8137-2337-X, US$ 38.00

✍ Scribed by A.J.(Tom) van Loon

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 40 KB
• Volume: 139
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0037-0738
• DOI: 10.1016/s0037-0738(00)00156-1

✦ Synopsis

The 1997 International Quaternary Union (INQUA) symposium on paleoglaciology is the basis of this book, which is meant to help foster communication and cooperative work between glacial geologists and glaciologists. This objective is well chosen because Ð as the editors state in their preface Ð ªin the last 20 years, few attempts have been made to incorporate glacial geologic constraints into glaciological models or to place physical constraints on hypotheses expounded by glacial geologistsº.

The book comprises 18 chapters, written by 51 authors. This might suggest that the book is representative for the community of researchers in the ®eld. It is not, however: 48 authors come from the US, 1 from Canada, and 2 from Eastern Europe (1 from Ukraine and 1 from Estonia). This is not necessarily a shortcoming, but in this case it is. The references, for instance, are clearly US-biased, which is unfortunate because high-quality research is carried out elsewhere in the world as well; studies from outside North-America are, however, largely neglected (although, obviously, not completely). This reduces, in my opinion, the value of the book as representing the state-of-the-art in this ®eld.

It can, however, not be excluded that it has not even been the intention of the GSA and the editors to provide an overview of present-day insights. In this case, however, they should have chosen another title for the book: it promises more now than it delivers. This is also expressed by the topics dealt with.