"Petrology and Plate Tectonics offers an Earth systems approach to teaching petrology. This emphasizes the importance of petrology in global geochemical cycles and links between the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. Teaching petrology from an Earth systems viewpoint makes clearer the underappreciated role that petrology plays in many areas of inquiry, including causes of climate change; causes of, and recovery from, mass extinctions; sources of key materials critical to modern society; geologic hazards; bedrock control of plant life; and the evolution and global dispersal of humans"-- Provided by publisher.