This Encyclopedia comprises the current knowledge in marine geosciences whereby not only basic but also applied and technical sciences are covered. Through this concept a broad scale of users in the field of marine sciences and techniques is addressed, from students and scholars in academia to engineers and decision makers in industry and politics.

Globally growing demand of energy and mineral resources, reliable future projection of climate processes and the protection of coasts to mitigate the threats of disasters and hazards require a comprehensive understanding of the structure, ongoing processes and genesis of the marine geosphere. Beyond the "classical" research fields in marine geology in current time more general concepts have been evolved integrating marine geophysics, hydrography, marine biology, climatology and ecology. As an umbrella the term "marine geosciences" has been broadly accepted for this new complex field of research and the solutions of practical tasks in the marine realm.

Jan Harff is Professor of Geosciences and Seafloor Geology at the University of Szczecin, Poland. His previous research focused on sedimentary basin analysis at the Central Institute for Physics of the Earth (ZIPE, subsequently the GeoForschungsZentrum, GFZ), Potsdam, and marine geology at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde and the University of Greifswald, Germany. He cooperates, on a permanent basis, with marine research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese universities and the Guangzhou Marine Geological Survey, Guangzhou, China. His research interests concern marine geology in general, sedimentology, coastal geology, palaeo-oceanography, palaeoclimatology, mathematical geology and basin modelling. In addition to having authored and co-authored numerous research papers and having served as editor of other scientific publications, he acted as corresponding editor of "Modeling of Sedimentary Systems" (Springer,1999) and "The Baltic Sea Basin" (Springer, 2011).

Martin Meschede is Professor of "Regional and Structural Geology" at the Institute of Geography and Geology, University of Greifswald, Germany. His research interests focus on geodynamic processes at plate margins, subduction, large igneous provinces, exhumation, paleogeography, paleoclimatology, basin evolution, and glacial tectonics. He participated in several marine research expeditions, among these are the Joides Resolution of IODP and a diving cruise with Shinkai 6500. Besides a number of scientific publications, he is author and coauthor of several textbooks on plate tectonics, structural geology, and regional geology of Germany.

Sven Petersen is a senior researcher at GEOMAR, Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany. His research focuses on understanding the processes that form and change seafloor hydrothermal systems and associated mineral deposits with time. He participated in more than 30 research cruises to submarine hydrothermal systems in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Ocean. Major aims of his research are to understand their chemical variability, the use of mobile drilling techniques and geophysical methods to investigate their sub-seafloor extent as well as the use of autonomous underwater vehicles for their exploration.

Jörn Thiede is the leader of the KÖPPEN-Laboratory of the Institute of Earth Sciences of Saint Petersburg State University. He worked 1967-1987 at the universities of Aarhus (Denmark), Bergen (Norway), Oregon State University in Corvallis (USA), Oslo (Norway) and Kiel (Germany) and learned to sail the world's oceans to understand their history. Afterwards he pursued the foundation of GEOMAR. In 1997 he joined The Alfred Wegener Institute-Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research. In 2008 he served at the Geocenter Denmark as well as at UNIS (Longyearbyen/Svalbard) and in 2011 was invited to join the St. Petersburg