Book Review: Geology of the Lassen Country: The Geologic Story of Lassen Volcanic National Park and Vicinity. (2019) By Forrest Hopson and Michael Clynne. Backcountry Press, Humboldt County, California. ISBN: 978-1-941624-07-4. 176 pages. Available in: Paperback, PDF $29.95.In 1981, a field guide changed my life. A year out of high school, I was happily employed at a recording studio when I purchased Stephen Whitney's (1979) A Sierra Club Naturalists Guide: The Sierra Nevada. That guide opened a door into a world that was strangely absent from high school science curricula, and still is. Whitney's book explained not just the “what” (how to identify trees, birds, landscapes, etc.) but also the “why” of what I saw hiking in the Sierra Nevada and southern California mountains. With guide in hand, I thought, “Perhaps instead of having music as a career and science as a hobby I should switch the two.” A terrific new field guide by Hopson and Clynne, Geology of the Lassen Country, does for Lassen geology what Whitney's book does for Sierra Nevada Natural History.This book is for park visitors with a passion for volcanoes. The title refers to the “Lassen Country” because relevant geologic features do not stop at the Lassen Volcano National Park boundary. And at a slim 176 pages, it is both surprisingly comprehensive and fits easily into the pocket of a daypack. The scientific descriptions are often quite technical for a general audience, but the glossary is comprehensive. Novices should expect to make frequent use of the glossary, but readers will find a very detailed and accurate view of the volcanic history of the region, as well as up-to-date descriptions and explanations of hot springs, active faults, glacial activity and weathering processes and how these affect the Lassen Country landscape.A key strength of the book is that it is nearly encyclopedic in detail. The text nonetheless seems to be designed with geologists in mind. Readers who are underwhelmed by the lack of detail in the Roadside Geology (Mountain Press) series will not be disappointed here. The tables and maps alone are well worth the purchase price as they succinctly organize a very complex geologic history. My students and I are engaged in research in the Park and this book will be a valuable reference when in the field. The authors' approach is also innovative within the genre. The first nine chapters (three-quarters of the book) are effectively an introductory course in Geology, entirely driven towards understanding Lassen Country outcrops, with most sections identifying locations where geological phenomena can be observed. The remainder of the book consists of an excellent 6-page summary of Lassen geologic history, a 1-day geologic road guide, and 8 hiking trail descriptions. This approach allows readers to use the book in different ways. If one is interested in seeing, for example, a shield volcano, or pahoehoe lava, the introductory chapters show where these can be found. A reader taking a lunch break at Chaos Crags can readily find maps, tables, and descriptions of rock types and eruption sequences for that location. Some place names, such as Cinder Cone, Fantastic Lava Beds, and Lassen Peak, are unfortunately not in the index, but they can be found by flipping through the pages. The road and hiking guides provide the more typical follow-the-yellow-brick road tours that are helpful to most visitors, whether geologically trained or not. Many of the photos and tables are also in Muffler and Clynne (2005), but this guide (at 337 g/11.9 oz and 21.6 × 14 × 1.3 cm/8.5 × 5.5 × 0.5 inches) is much easier to pack and carry. The only advantage of the Muffler and Clynne (2005) guide is that it provides charts that would interest petrologists and geochemists. Lassen enthusiasts will likely want both.I would also recommend the book for non-geologists, or perhaps students enrolled in a college-level introductory geology class that is focused on Lassen, but with caveats. Technical terms are densely employed, and the publishers have blundered badly—in their Preface, the authors note that “technical words are in boldface and listed in the glossary.” The glossary is there, but the boldface is not. A saving grace is that the authors have judged well in placing nearly all terms into the glossary. In any case, non-geologists will need to make use of that glossary to understand each page, if not each paragraph. Non-scientists are also likely to be curious about how Nature creates an array of volcanic rock types, and some clearer connections between field observations and genetic processes, like crystal-liquid separation and magma mixing might also be helpful to people new to geology or petrology. In addition, the authors bypassed an opportunity to educate readers about a geologic view of climate change: the book contains an excellent summary of glaciation, but a revised edition would benefit from a figure that shows how “ice ages” are connected to the rise and fall of CO2, and how our current global warming is different from these events; park visitors would then understand why geologists are uniformly concerned about anthropogenic inputs of CO2 into the atmosphere.There are a few geologic errors that one could quibble over (for example, the upwelling limbs of a deep-seated convection cell should not be placed beneath a mid-ocean ridge), and I think a new edition could make use of some very recent advances in Lassen geology. For example, the authors should probably mention the very important work of Klemetti and Clynne (2014), who address timescales of volcanic rejuvenation (tens to thousands of years) and magma storage (200 ka). Such results are probably the single most important advance since Clynne (1999) and are likely to interest non-geologists who often wonder about “the next eruption.” My own student, Melissa Scruggs, has also shown in Scruggs and Putirka (2018) that magma mixing is an unlikely proximate cause of eruption, based on observations of post-mixing cooling; she concludes that at least Chaos Crags magmas likely erupt only after reaching vapor saturation, just as Clynne (1999) had inferred for the 1915 eruption, in his now-classic study of the latest eruptive events.Since I mostly visit Lassen for research purposes, I was curious about how the text might be received by teachers interested in leading field excursions to the region. I thus showed the book to our Lecturer, Kerry Workman Ford, who leads biannual trips to Lassen for non-Geology majors at Fresno State. She finds the text a truly excellent resource for teachers (but too jargon rich to be a required text). She also helpfully suggests that future editions include hiking guides to Fantastic Lava Beds, Cinder Cone, and Painted Dunes.Perhaps the best way to describe this book is to imagine a scale, with the Roadside Geology series on one side, and geologic guidebooks produced for scientific meetings on the other. This book falls quite close to the latter, but with enough introductory material to be self-contained and likely to satisfy avid, self-taught readers. It may indeed fill an important niche. Geologists produce many field guides, but few if any reach the hands of the average tourist. But I can think of no more powerful way to advance a public appreciation and understanding of science than to show how science can inform what the visitor sees when touring public lands. I wonder if this new guidebook by Hopson and Clynne could serve as a model for other National Parks. I could easily envision this book being part of a series that would include any number of Parks in the U.S. I'd happily sign up for the version that covers Yosemite or Kings Canyon-Sequoia.

中文翻译：

---

书评

书评：拉森国家地质：拉森火山国家公园和附近地区的地质故事。（2019）福雷斯特·霍普森（Forrest Hopson）和迈克尔·克莱恩（Michael Clynne）。偏远地区出版社，加利福尼亚州洪堡县。ISBN：978-1-941624-07-4。176页。可提供：平装本，PDF 29.95美元。1981年，一位实地指南改变了我的生活。高中毕业一年后，当我购买斯蒂芬·惠特尼（1979）的《塞拉俱乐部自然主义者指南：内华达山脉》时，在一家录音室工作很愉快。那本指南打开了一扇通往高中科学课程奇怪的世界的大门，而现在仍然如此。惠特尼的书不仅解释了“什么”（如何识别树木，鸟类，风景等），还解释了我在内华达山脉和南加州山脉远足的“原因”。我想有了向导，“也许我不应该将音乐作为一种职业，而将科学作为一种业余爱好，而应该将两者转换。” 拉森国家地质学的霍普森和克林恩（Hopson and Clynne）撰写的一部精彩绝伦的新野外指南对拉森地质学的作用就像惠特尼（Whitney）的书对内华达山脉自然历史的作用一样。该标题指的是“拉森国家”，因为相关的地质特征并不止于拉森火山国家公园边界。薄达176页，既全面又出奇，可轻松放入背包的口袋。对于一般读者来说，科学的描述通常是相当技术性的，但是术语表是全面的。新手应该会经常使用该词汇表，但读者会发现该地区火山历史的非常详细和准确的视图，以及有关温泉，活动断层，冰川活动和风化过程以及它们如何影响拉森乡村景观的最新描述和说明。这本书的主要优势在于它几乎是详尽的百科全书。尽管如此，该文本似乎在设计时就考虑了地质学家。在路边地质学（山地出版社）系列中缺少细节的读者将不会感到失望。仅凭表格和地图就很值得购买，因为它们简洁地组织了非常复杂的地质历史。我和我的学生们都在公园里从事研究工作，这本书在现场时将是有价值的参考。作者的方法在该类型中也是创新的。前九章（本书的四分之三）实际上是地质入门课程，完全着眼于了解拉森乡村露头，大多数部分确定了可以观察到地质现象的位置。本书的其余部分包括6页精美的Lassen地质历史摘要，1天的地质道路指南以及8条远足径说明。这种方法允许读者以不同的方式使用本书。例如，如果有兴趣参观盾牌火山或Pahoehoe熔岩，那么介绍性章节会显示在哪里可以找到这些东西。在Chaos Crags午餐休息的读者可以轻松找到该位置的地图，表格以及岩石类型和喷发序列的描述。不幸的是，某些地名（例如Cinder Cone，Fantastic Lava Beds和Lassen Peak）不在索引中，但可以通过翻动页面来找到它们。道路和远足指南提供了更典型的黄砖公路旅行，对大多数游客都有用，无论他们是否接受了地质训练。许多照片和桌子也都放在Muffler和Clynne（2005）中，但是此指南（337克/11.9盎司和21.6×14×1.3厘米/8.5×5.5×0.5英寸）更易于包装和携带。Muffler and Clynne（2005）指南的唯一优点是，它提供了岩石学家和地球化学家感兴趣的图表。拉森的爱好者可能会同时想要这两者。我还将向非地质学家推荐这本书，或者为那些参加了针对拉森的大学级入门级地质课程的学生推荐，但要注意。技术术语使用率很高，而出版商则犯了严重错误-在其序言中，作者指出，“技术词汇为黑体字，并在词汇表中列出。” 词汇表在那里，但黑体字没有。一个节省的好处是，作者在将几乎所有术语放入词汇表中都做出了很好的判断。无论如何，非地质学家将需要利用该词汇表来理解每一页，即使不是每一段。非科学家也可能会对大自然如何创造出一系列火山岩类型感到好奇，并且实地观察与遗传过程之间的一些更清晰的联系，如晶体-液体分离和岩浆混合，也可能对新接触地质或岩石学的人们有所帮助。此外，作者绕过了向读者介绍气候变化的地质学观点的机会：这本书包含了关于冰川消融的出色总结，但是修订版将受益于一个数字，该数字显示了“冰河年龄”与二氧化碳的上升和下降之间的关系，以及我们目前的全球变暖与这些事件有何不同；然后，公园的游客将了解为什么地质学家会一直关注二氧化碳的人为输入。人们可能会纠缠一些地质错误（例如，深对流单元的上升流四肢不应放在地下中海脊），我认为新版可以利用拉森地质学的一些最新进展。例如，作者可能应该提到Klemetti和Clynne（2014）的非常重要的工作，他们探讨了火山复兴（数十至数千年）和岩浆储存（200 ka）的时间尺度。这些结果可能是自Clynne（1999）以来最重要的单个进展，并且可能引起非地质学家的兴趣，他们常常对“下一次喷发”感到疑惑。我的学生梅利莎·斯克鲁格斯（Melissa Scruggs）在斯克鲁格斯和普蒂尔卡（Scruggs and Putirka，2018）中也表明，根据混合后冷却的观察，岩浆混合不太可能是喷发的直接原因; 她的结论是，至少混沌混沌岩浆可能只有在达到饱和蒸汽后才爆发，就像克林妮（1999年）在他对最新爆发事件的经典研究中推断的那样，是1915年爆发的。由于我主要是为了研究目的而访问拉森，我很好奇对感兴趣的实地考察该地区的老师会如何收到课文。因此，我将这本书展示给了我们的讲师克里·曼·福特，他带领弗雷斯诺州立大学的非地质专业学生每两年一次前往拉森旅行。她发现该文本对于教师而言确实是一个极好的资源（但术语太丰富而不能成为必需的文本）。她还建议将来的版本包括奇幻熔岩床，煤渣锥和彩绘沙丘的徒步旅行指南。也许描述这本书的最好方法是想象一个比例尺，将《路边地质》系列放在一边，并编写地质指南。其他科学会议。这本书与后者非常接近，但是具有足够的入门资料，可以自成一体，并可能使狂热的自学成才的读者满意。它可能确实填补了一个重要的利基市场。地质学家会提供许多野外指南，但很少有普通游客掌握。但是，除了展示科学如何告知游客参观公共土地时所见的事物之外，我认为没有什么更有效的途径可以提高公众对科学的认识和理解。我不知道霍普森（Hopson）和克林恩（Clynne）撰写的新指南是否可以作为其他国家公园的榜样。我可以很容易地想到这本书是一系列书籍的一部分，其中包括美国的任何公园，我很乐意报名参加涵盖优胜美地或Kings Canyon-Sequoia的版本。