Encyclopedia of Marine Geosciences

Globally growing demand of energy and mineral resources, reliable future projection of climate processes and the protection of coasts to mitigate the threats of disasters and hazards require a comprehensive understanding of the structure, ongoing processes and genesis of the marine geosphere. Beyond the “classical” research fields in marine geology in current time more general concepts have been evolved integrating marine geophysics, hydrography, marine biology, climatology and ecology. As an umbrella the term “marine geosciences” has been broadly accepted for this new complex field of research and the solutions of practical tasks in the marine realm.
The “Encyclopedia of Marine Geosciences” comprises the current knowledge in marine geosciences whereby not only basic but also applied and technical sciences are covered. Through this concept a broad scale of users in the field of marine sciences and techniques is addressed from students and scholars in academia to engineers and decision makers in industry and politics.

Jan Harff is Professor of “Geosciences and Sea Floor Geology” at the University of Szczecin, Faculty of Geosciences, Institute of Marine and Coastal Science, Szczecin, Poland. He retired as Professor of Marine Geology at the University of Greifswald, Germany, and is currently Adjunct Professor of the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Guangzhou, and at the Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research CAS, China. Beside marine geology, his research interests include, sedimentology, coastal geology, paleoceanography, paleo-climatology, mathematical geology and basin modelling. In addition to numerous scientific publications and other scientific editions, he was the corresponding editor of “Modeling of Sedimentary Systems” and “The Baltic Sea Basin” published by Springer in 1999 and 2011.

Martin Meschede is professor at the Institute of Geography and Geology, University of Greifswald, Germany

Sven Petersen is a senior researcher at GEOMAR, Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany. His research focuses on understanding the processes that form and change seafloor hydrothermal systems and associated mineral deposits with time. He participated in more than 30 research cruises to submarine hydrothermal systems in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Ocean. Major aims of his research are to understand their chemical variability, the use of mobile drilling techniques and geophysical methods to investigate their subseafloor extent as well as the use of autonomous underwater vehicles for their exploration.

Jorn Thiede worked 1967-1987 at the universities of Aarhus (Denmark), Bergen (Norway), Oregon State University in Corvallis (USA), Oslo (Norway) and Kiel (Germany) and learned to sail the worlds oceans to understand their history. Afterwards he persued the foundation of GEOMAR. In 1997 he joined the The Alfred Wegener Institute-Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research. In 2008 he served at the Geocenter Denmark and in 2010 was invited to join the St. Petersburg State University (Russia).