Geoscientist Online

For the past three decades, Donald Turcotte and Gerald Schubert’s first edition (1982) was a landmark book that has guided many teachers and students alike in the field of geodynamics. The second edition was published 20 years later and now in 2014 a third edition has appeared.

After an introduction to plate tectonics on Earth and other planets, the various physical and chemical processes are treated including flexure of plates, heat transfer, gravitational processes and the mechanics of fluids and rocks. When compared to the second edition, a whopping 167 pages have been added, equivalent to an extra 38% of content. This extra material consists almost entirely of two chapters listing MATLAB program codes to aid with computational applications. This would be of high value for students and researchers in training who are involved in programming their own geophysical applications. For the non-programming reader, this extra content is of less interest.

The back page claims that the book is fully updated and key figures are available in colour. However at closer examination of the original 10 chapters, only limited updates are found. Several extra problems are discussed, and every chapter ends with a brief conclusion. As most referenced text and figures refer back to publications from the previous century, one starts to wonder whether geoscientific research has progressed over the past 15 years at all! Some colour figures are now included, showing various features of extraterrestrial bodies. Unfortunately no equivalent colour images are provided of the Earth (i.e., satellite imagery, topography, gravimetric or magnetic field), which would have been valuable additions.

Deeper geodynamics such as core and lower mantle processes seem to be largely missing from the book. This is a lost opportunity as in recent decades much progress has been made on understanding the geodynamo and imaging of the mantle by means of seismic wave tomography. In terms of the books online content, all figures and answers to selected problems can be downloaded from the publishers’ website. Unfortunately this seems to be only possible as a registered lecturer because a link needs to be provided to a staff profile webpage.