The Geology of Stratigraphic Sequences

It has been more than a decade since the appearance of the First Edition of this book. Much progress has been made, but some controversies remain. The original idea of Sloss and of Vail (building on the early work of Blackwelder, Grabau, Ulrich, Levorsen and others) that the stratigraphic record could be subdivided into sequences and that these sequences store essential information about basin-forming and subsidence processes remains as powerful an idea as when it was first formulated. The definition and mapping of sequences has become a standard part of the basin analysis process. Subsurface methods make use of advanced seismic-reflection analysis methods, with three-dimensional seismic methods, and seismic geomorphology adding important new dimensions to the analysis. Several advanced textbooks have now appeared that deal with the recognition and definition of sequences and their interpretation in terms of the evolution of depositional systems, the recognition and correlation of bounding surfaces, and the interpretation of sequences in terms of changing accommodation and supply. This is not one of these books. The main purpose of this book remains the same as it was for the first edition, that is, to situate sequences within the broader context of geological processes so that geoscientists might be better equipped to extract the maximum information from the record of sequences in a given basin or region.

Andrew Miall was born and educated in Brighton, England, and completed his B.Sc. in Geology at the University of London in 1965. He emigrated to Canada and joined the graduate research program in Arctic geology at University of Ottawa, gaining a Ph.D. from this work in 1969. He worked for several companies in Calgary and then joined the Geological Survey of Canada in Calgary in 1972 as a Research Scientist in the Arctic Islands section. He left for Toronto in 1979, and is the inaugural holder of the Gordon Stollery Chair in Basin Analysis and Petroleum Geology at the University of Toronto.

Miall was Editor of the national Canadian journal Geoscience Canada from 1982 to 1989, and was Co-Chief Editor of the Elsevier journal Sedimentary Geology from 1987 to 2005. He is currently serving as the sedimentology editor for Earth Science Reviews. He is the author, co-author or editor of ten books, including "Principles of Sedimentary Basin Analysis", a research-level synthesis, now in its third edition, and "Canada Rocks: The Geologic Journey", authored by N. Eyles and A. D. Miall (2007).

Andrew Miall was awarded the Past President's Medal of the Geological Association of Canada in 1983 and became a Distinguished Fellow in 1995. In 1992 he was awarded the D.Sc. degree from the University of London. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada in 1995, and was awarded an Honourary Doctorate from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, in March 2001. He has served as Vice President (2005-2007) and President (2007-2009) of the Academy of Science.