火山活動は私たちに限りない恐怖と驚異の念をおこさせる自然現象です。大陸分裂や地殻の進化に重要な役割を果たす地球にとって重要でな現象ですが、ほかの天体においても確認されています。火山についての現在の知見をまとめ、未だ解き明かされていない謎について整理し、ほかの現象や生命、人間社会との係わりを考察します。地下のマグマの動きを観察することができない中で、火山をめぐる物理プロセスはどのように読み解かれているのでしょうか。火山研究の最先端に読者を誘います。
  

• Explains the fundamental mechanisms of volcanism, both on Earth and on other planets
• Explores how volcanologists forensically decipher how volcanoes work, and the sort of evidence they employ
• Considers how volcanism has impacted on climate, landscape, and biological evolution throughout our planet's history
• Shows how we can benefit from understanding how volcanoes behave

  
Volcanoes are some of the most dramatic expressions of the powerful tectonic forces at work in the Earth beneath our feet. But volcanism, a profoundly important feature of Earth, and indeed of other planets and moons too, encompasses much more than just volcanoes themselves. On a planetary scale, volcanism is an indispensable heat release mechanism, which on Earth allows the conditions for life. IIt releases gases into the atmosphere and produces enormous volumes of rock, and spectacular landscapes - landscapes which, during major eruptions, can be completely reshaped in a matter of hours. Through geological time volcanism has shaped both climate and biological evolution, and volcanoes can affect human life, too, for both good and ill. Yet, even after much study, some of the fundamental aspects of volcanicity remain mysterious.
  
This Very Short Introduction takes the readers into the inferno of a racing pyroclastic current, and the heart of a moving lava flow, as understood through the latest scientific research. Exploring how volcanologists forensically decipher how volcanoes work, Michael Branney and Jan Zalasiewicz explain what we do (and don't) understood about the fundamental mechanisms of volcanism, and consider how volcanoes interact with other physical processes on the Earth, with life, and with human society.