Chapter 1: Motivations and Opportunities

In Chapter 1 we motivate the study of structural geology by introducing selected topics that illustrate the extraordinary breadth of interesting problems and important practical applications of this discipline. For example, we describe a mechanism for mountain building that was discovered in the Henry Mountains of southern Utah in the late 19th Century by one of the pioneers of structural geology, G. K. Gilbert. The frontispiece for this chapter (see above) is a photograph of Mt. Ellsworth in the southern Henry Mountains. The inset is the frontispiece from Gilbert's classic 'Report on the Henry Mountains' (1877) showing the structural dome at Mt. Ellsworth. Other examples involve earthquake hazards in southern California, volcanic structures on Venus, normal faulting in a North Sea petroleum reservoir, and anticracks in limestone of southern France.