"We use our knowledge of geology to build safer cities."
(from Toronto Rocks)

With its dense streetscapes, the Toronto region seems an unlikely location for a geological field trip, yet as our cities expand and
natural landscape becomes buried, the greater the importance of the geology beneath our feet to our everyday existence.

Where can we build safely? Where do we dump our garbage? Where are our ground waters and how can we protect them? What happens to salt we put on icy roads when it permeates into the ground in the spring?

How can we protect and preserve such national treasures as the Niagara Escarpment and the Oak Ridges Moraine?

As cities continue to expand, altering the natural landscape and changing the natural balance of the planet beneath our feet, the answers to questions about our geological past are more important today than ever before.

Where can we build safely? How strong are the rocks beneath the buildings we continue to push skyward? What do we do with polluted soil?

Will the CN Tower fall?

What does the history of earthquakes tell us of possible future events?

In Toronto Rocks, University of Toronto geology professor Nick Eyles conducts a unique tour of Canada's largest city past and present; a city of more than 6 million people where the past beneath our feet is
perhaps more important than ever before.

Nick Eyles
holds a Ph.D (East Anglia) and D.Sc. (Leicester) and is Professor of Geology at the University of Toronto. His prime research interest is in glacial sedimentology and has many years' experience with field work at modern glaciers. He has worked at the universities of Leicester, Newcastle upon Tyne and East Anglia in Great Britain, at Memorial University in Newfoundland and has been at Toronto since 1981 when he was awarded a prestigious NSERC University Research Fellowship. He has authored more than 150 publications in leading scientific journals on ice age geology and environmental geology and has conducted geological fieldwork from the Arctic to the Antarctic, including work with the Ocean Drilling Program onboard the drillship Resolution. Recent sabbaticals have been held in Brazil and Australia. His other books include Canada Rocks and Ontario Rocks.

Nick Eyles' profile page

Laura Clinton's profile page