Impact Cratering Across the Solar System, Volume Three provides an up-to-date, accessible, and comprehensive discussion of impact landforms and processes that shape and drive the evolution of planets, moons, and smaller bodies. This book is a necessary resource for sourcing reliable and thorough information on how impact cratering manifests throughout the solar system. The book covers pressing topics, such as how an impact event may be responsible for the major crustal dichotomy on Mars, how impact melting may have created the oldest known rocks on Earth, or how impact craters can be used to date planetary surfaces throughout the Solar System.
This third volume in the Comparative Planetology series places a singular emphasis on comparing impact cratering processes on all relevant solar system bodies, with the explicit objective of providing a systems-level understanding of this widespread phenomenon. This book is ideal for students, academics, and researchers in the fields of planetary science, geology, and astronomy, as well as those who study planetary impacts such as geophysicists, seismologists, and structural geologists.
Table of Contents
1. Overview of the Impact Cratering Process 2. Crater morphology and morphometry (two separate chapters merged into one) 3. Impact ejecta deposits 4. Effects of impacts on target geology 5. Impactites
The products of impact (two separate chapters merged into one) 6. Impacts into atmospheres 7. Crater chronology 8. Role of impacts in the origin and evolution of life 9. Role of impacts in planetary evolution 10. Synthesis and Outlook
Authors
Gordon R. Osinski Professor and NSERC/MDA/CSA/CEMI Industrial Research Chair in Earth and Space Exploration, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Western Ontario (Western), Canada.
Dr. Gordon "Oz Osinski is a Professor and the NSERC/MDA/CSA/CEMI Industrial Research Chair in Earth and Space Exploration in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Western Ontario (Western), Canada. He holds a PhD from the University of New Brunswick (2004) and a BSc (Hons) from the University of St. Andrews (1999), Scotland, both in Geology. Dr. Osinski's research interests focus is on understanding impact cratering as a planetary geological process, on the Earth, Moon and Mars. He has conducted fieldwork at dozens of impact craters on four continents over the past 20 years. He has made substantial contributions to understanding the impact cratering process, including shock melting and metamorphism, impact ejecta emplacement, complex crater formation, and impact-generated hydrothermal systems. Dr. Osinski has published over 185 papers in peer-reviewed journals and special papers and has given over 110 conference presentations. He has received numerous awards for this research, including the Nier Prize of the Meteoritical Society (2009), the Young Scientist Medal of the Mineralogical Association of Canada (2015), and the Florence Bucke Award from Western (2015). Most recently, he was awarded the prestigious W. W. Hutchison Medal of the Geological Association of Canada and was named a Faculty Scholar at Western, both in 2018. Dr. Osinski is also the lead for Impact Earth, a unique initiative that seels to engage researchers and the public alike in the study of meteorite impacts, fireballs and meteorites.
Catherine D. Neish Assistant Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Western Ontario, Canada.
Dr. Catherine Neish is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Western Ontario. She is an expert in the use of remote sensing observations to study the geology of planetary surfaces, with a particular emphasis on impact cratering and volcanism. Dr. Neish obtained her graduate training in planetary sciences at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona (2008). She then held two postdoctoral research positions at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, as well as an Assistant Professorship at the Florida Institute of Technology. To date, Dr. Neish has published over 55 papers in peer-reviewed journals, including 19 as first author, and wrote an invited book chapter on planetary radar for the Encyclopedia of the Solar System (3rd Edition). Dr. Neish is involved in NASA spacecraft missions as a Co-Investigator, including Cassini, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and Dragonfly. She has been awarded the Ronald Greeley Early Career Award in Planetary Science from the American Geophysical Union, for significant contributions to planetary science from a young scientist (2014), an NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement (2015), and an Early Researcher Award from the Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation, and Science (2017).
