New material on recent natural disasters including:
- the 2010 Iceland volcano eruption and the important economic effects due to ash clouds disrupting air travel over all of Europe
- the 2010 Merapi (Indonesia) eruptions which claimed more lives that any other volcano this century
- the 2011 Honchu (Japan) tsunami
The most current data on climate change (Chapter 15)
Recent news from the field on natural resources, including fracking (Chapter 5) and ages of petroleum source rocks (Chapter 8).
Cutting edge information on the Mars Mission, provided by the mission’s chief geologist, John Grotzinger (Chapters 9 and 11)
Updated Earth Issues boxes that highlight controversial, social, political, and economic issues (building codes, Italian geology prison case, Mars mission, etc.)