Available From UC Press

With its active fault systems, complex landforms, and myriad natural habitats, southern California boasts a rich and dynamic geologic environment. This abundantly illustrated volume at last provides an up-to-date, authoritative, and accessible resource for students and general readers interested in southern California's geology and native plants. Covering an extensive area, north from San Diego to Yosemite in the Sierra Nevada and east to the Mojave and Colorado deserts, its unique, comprehensive approach brings together for the first time the basic principles of geology, the story of plate tectonics, in-depth discussion of the geology of many specific locales within the region, and information on identifying southern California's native plants.

Clarence A. Hall, Jr., is Professor of Geology in the Department of Earth and Space Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, Director Emeritus of the University of California's White Mountain Research Station, and Dean Emeritus of the Division of Physical Science, College of Letters and Science, UCLA. He is editor of Natural History of the White-Inyo Range, Eastern California (UC Press) among other books.

"This treatise seamlessly combines an elementary introduction to the theories, facts, and principles defining modern earth science with an up-to-date integration of the present state of knowledge regarding the geologic architecture and geohistory of southern California. Hall, the world's leading expert on this region, has delivered a spectacularly illustrated compendium that should be required reading for the southern Californian geologist, naturalist, botanist, and generally inquisitive hiker."—W. G. Ernst, Stanford University