Iron-bearing (magnetic) minerals in natural environments (e.g., lake, marine, and wind-blown loess deposits) are sensitive to a wide range of environmental processes, including the formation, transportation, deposition, and post-depositional alterations of these minerals. Environmental magnetism has, therefore, been widely used to investigate environmental changes at different spatial and temporal scales since the mid 1970s. The fields of rock and environmental magnetism have grown considerably over the past thirty years.
Research in environmental magnetism spans the geosciences and branches of physics, chemistry, biology and environmental science, including research on climate change, pollution, iron biomineralization, and depositional and diagenetic processes in sediments, etc. Recent progress in environmental magnetism has focused on quantitative interpretation of magnetic proxies, due to increasing use of advanced scientific tools and methods, such as new unmixing tools, micromagnetic modeling, and even elaborate techniques from outside the Earth Sciences.
This Research Topic will cover new techniques that demonstrate how environmental magnetism has benefited from close collaborations with biology, chemistry and physics, and how it has also had an impact in these fields. In addition, contributions will be welcomed from environmental magnetic applications that elucidate wide-ranging environmental and geological processes.
Iron-bearing (magnetic) minerals in natural environments (e.g., lake, marine, and wind-blown loess deposits) are sensitive to a wide range of environmental processes, including the formation, transportation, deposition, and post-depositional alterations of these minerals. Environmental magnetism has, therefore, been widely used to investigate environmental changes at different spatial and temporal scales since the mid 1970s. The fields of rock and environmental magnetism have grown considerably over the past thirty years.
Research in environmental magnetism spans the geosciences and branches of physics, chemistry, biology and environmental science, including research on climate change, pollution, iron biomineralization, and depositional and diagenetic processes in sediments, etc. Recent progress in environmental magnetism has focused on quantitative interpretation of magnetic proxies, due to increasing use of advanced scientific tools and methods, such as new unmixing tools, micromagnetic modeling, and even elaborate techniques from outside the Earth Sciences.
This Research Topic will cover new techniques that demonstrate how environmental magnetism has benefited from close collaborations with biology, chemistry and physics, and how it has also had an impact in these fields. In addition, contributions will be welcomed from environmental magnetic applications that elucidate wide-ranging environmental and geological processes.