Diagenesis affects all sediments after their deposition and includes a fundamental suite of physical, chemical and biological processes that control the texture, mineralogy and fluid-flow properties of sedimentary rocks.

Understanding the processes and products of diagenesis is thus a critical component in the analysis of the evolution of sedimentary basins, and has practical implications for subsurface porosity destruction, preservation and generation. This in turn is of great relevance to the petroleum and water industries, as well as to the location and nature of some economic mineral deposits.

• Combines key papers in sandstone diagenesis published in Sedimentology over the last 30 years.
• Records the development of diagenesis from the description of grain shapes through provenance, petrography and analytical geochemistry to predictive models of diagenetic process.
• Provides definitions and explanations of the terms and concepts used in diagenesis.

If you are a member of the International Association of Sedimentologists, for purchasing details, please see:
http://www.iasnet.org/publications/details.asp?code=RP4

Justine Burley is Simon Fellow in the Department of Government, University of Manchester and Lecturer in Politics at Exeter College, Oxford. She is editor of The Genetic Revolution and Human Rights (1998), the Oxford Amnesty Lectures for 1998, which she co-organized.

John Harris is Sir David Alliance Professor of Bioethics at the University of Manchester where he is also Director of the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy and Academic Director of the Institute of Medicine, Law and Bioethics. He is the author of Violence and Responsibility (1980), The Value of Life (1985), Wonderwoman and Superman (1992, and Clones, Genes and Immortality (1998). He has also co-edited Experiments on Embryos (1990), Ethics and Biotechnology (1994), and The Future of Human Reproduction (1998).