Cycles of Rock and Water brilliantly crystallizes five years of intensive research. This prodigious exploration of the Pacific coast examines the many links between landscape and life, focusing on how the region's geological evolution has influenced its plants and animals. Traveling by foot, seaplane, helicopter, and boat, Brown accompanied eminent geologists and biologists on countless field trips from the mobile peninsula of Baja California up through the little-known oil reserves of congested Los Angeles, the earthquake prone city of San Francisco, the massive dunes of central Oregon, and the remote Aleutian Islands and their native peoples. During his more than twenty thousand miles of land and sea travel, Brown collected a staggering wealth of up-to-the-minute data on the region's earthquakes, volcanoes, mountain ranges, fault zones, and much more. His findings are sometimes shocking, even frightening, but always of great interest. For instance, few know that the energy produced by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that devastated San Francisco equaled that of a thermonuclear bomb, and was triggered by the same geological activity that affects the Aleutian Islands six thousand miles away; that Los Angeles and San Diego will be as far north as Alaska in one hundred million years; that cacti evolved from trees; and that by 1997 the average speed on southern California freeways will be nineteen miles per hour. Cycles of Rock and Water goes beyond the nuts and bolts of science. It's a book that captures the texture and character of an entire region, in all its diversity and beauty.