GENERAL INTEREST

Battersby, S. "Eat Your Crusts." New Scientist 179.10 (30 Aug. 2003): 30–33. Water not only forms the oceans, it may also be the key ingredient in the water planet's unique plate tectonics.

Fischman, J. "In Search of the Elusive Megaplume." Discover 20.3 (March 1999): 108–115. Eruptions on the sea floor generate huge plumes of microbe-rich warm water.

Gurnis, M. "Sculpting the Earth from Inside Out." Scientific American 284.3 (March 2001): 40–47. The slow motion of the mantle raises and lowers entire continents.

Jones, N. "Volcanic Bombshell." New Scientist 177.2385 (8 March 2003): 32–37. A small but growing band of geologists questions the conventional wisdom that mantle plumes and volcanic hot spots explain the Hawaiian Islands and other island chains, volcanism in Yellowstone National Park, and indeed the very mechanism of plate tectonics.

"The Mid-ocean Ridge, Parts 1 & 2." Oceanus 41.1-2 (1998). Two entire issues of this informative publication devoted to mid-ocean ridges, hot spots, hydrothermal vents, and related topics.

Pratson, L. F. and W. F. Haxby. "Panoramas of the Seafloor." Scientific American 276.6 (June 1997): 66–71. Fantastic pictures of the U.S. continental margins, made possible by advanced new sonar techniques.
http://www.sciamdigital.com

Ravilious, K. "Deep Secrets." New Scientist 174.2339 (20 April 2002): 38–41. A scuba-diving geologist discovers 200,000 years of the earth's climate history recorded in the stalagmites of a sunken cave.

Ravilious, K. "Wind-up." New Scientist 176.2370 (11 November 2002): 30–33. Massive movements of material in the earth's mantle may actually change how fast the planet spins—and thus the length of our days.

IN DEPTH

Kelley, D. S., J. A. Baross and J. R. Delaney. "Volcanoes, Fluids, and Life at Mid-ocean Ridge Spreading Centers." AnnualReview of Earth and Planetary Sciences 30 (2002): 385–491.

Lieberman, B. "Paleobiogeography: The Relevance of Fossils to Biogeography." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 34 (2003): 51–69

Porbski, S. J. and R. J. Steel. "Shelf-margin Deltas: Their Stratigraphic Significance and Relation to Deepwater Sands." Earth-Science Reviews 62.3-4 (2003): 283–326.

Rundquist, D. V. and P. O. Sobolev. "Seismicity of Mid-oceanic Ridges and its Geodynamic Implications: A Review." Earth-Science Reviews 58.1-2 (2002): 143–161.