The geosciences need practitioners who possess an ethical conscience and the desire to act responsibly. Ethically responsible geoscientists will achieve success and satisfaction by carrying out excellent research and professional activities, and by maintaining honest and open collaborations with colleagues. Such individuals will be able to contribute to building a resilient society, be better prepared to face global economic and environmental challenges and be willing to take concrete actions for the conservation of the geo-environment. Geoethics provides ethical, social, and cultural values for the scientific community and for society as a whole. Geoethics represents a new vision of a world in which it is possible to maintain a more balanced relationship between humans and nature, considering modern economic and social development expectations. This chapter illustrates some aspects of geoethics, provides an overview of its basic values and themes, and highlights prominent global issues that involve geoethics, including climate change, geo-risks, land management, exploitation of geo-resources, and sustainability. The International Association for Promoting Geoethics (IAPG) provides a multidisciplinary platform for discussion, a place where multidisciplinary collaboration can strengthen the development of geoethics from a scientific and philosophical perspective, in order to better introduce geoethical values into society.

Following the India-Asia collision, intracrustal movements along the Main Central Thrust (MCT) and Main Boundary Thrust (MBT) in a piggy-back-style, thrust duplexes developed that uplifted the Vaikrita (Central) crystallines of the basement to more than 8000 m elevation. Blocking of subduction on the suture and slowing down of movement on the MCT led to the formation of the Trans-Himadri (Malari) Thrust between the Vaikrita basement and the Tethyan cover sediments, and to gravity-induced backfolds and backthrusts in the latter. The Vaikrita crystallines underwent upper amphibolite to lower granulite facies metamorphism at 600-650 °C and more than 5 kbar (1 kbar = 101 *8 Pa) and migmatistation associated with 28-20 Ma old S-type granites that formed at 15-30 km depth during the culmination of metamorphism and thrust deformation. Delimited by the MCT and MBT, the Lesser Himalaya is made of Proterozoic sediments beneath the Almora nappe constituted of low- to medium-grade metamorphics and 1900+ 100 Ma old granitic gneisses and 560 + 20 Ma old granites. The Lesser Himilaya underwent considerable neotectonic rejuvenation during differential movements along the MBT. The frontal Siwalik molasse below the MBT was severely thrusted and folded in the late Holocene, and continued underthrusting of the Indian Shield beneath the Himalaya is manifest in the development and activation of the deep Himalayan Front Fault (HFF), which separates the Siwalik from the subRecent-Recent alluvial plain of the Ganga Basin.

Skardu Basin is a northwest-trending intermontane basin along the Indus River in the Karakoram Himalaya Mountains of Pakistan. Seismotectonic domain boundaries inthe Karakoram Himalaya commonly cross lithologic and some older structural boundaries. Four major structural-seismotectonic domains exist in the Skardu area: the Himalayan seismic zone, characterized by thrust tectonics; the complex Hindu KushPamir seismic zone; the Skardu quiet zone, characterized by strike-slip, extensional, and rotational tectonics with relatively little seismicity; and the southern edge of Eurasian lithosphere (Tarim-Kun Lun-Tibet) northeast of the Karakoram fault. The Skardu quiet zone is interpreted to be within the Himalayan thrust prism, above an aseismic detachment along which stable sliding or ductile faulting accommodates displacement. Stresses transmitted into the Skardu quiet zone laterally from the Himalayan seismic zone toward Eurasia and perhaps upward from the inferred basal detachment result in gross clockwise rotation, translation to the north-northwest, and a right-lateral sense of shear in the Skardu region.Landsat lineaments defined by major drainages suggest an array of fractures and faults in the Skardu quiet zone. Field data suggest that the lineaments generally reflect distributed shear along myriad small faults rather than displacement exclusively localized on major, discrete fault surfaces. Extensive glacial and fluvial erosion have accentuated trends characterized by relatively dense fracturing and faulting. At its confluence with the Indus at Skardu, the Shigar River flows through a breach that may have originated as a pull-apart structure similar to the pull-apart basin along the upper Sutlej River.The preserved vestiges of the upper Cenozoic Bunthang sedimentary sequence reflect Skardu's early basin phase. Uplift along the Nanga Parbat-Haramosh syntaxis and along the northeastern margin of the Himalayan seismic zone may have contributed to the ponding of the Indus River in the Skardu Basin during Bunthang time. These axes of uplift may be related to movement of the Himalayan thrust wedge from a region of easy basal slip (Skardu quiet zone) to a region of increased resistance to basal slip (Himalayan seismic zone, or, in the case of the NP-H syntaxis, the Hindu Kush-Pamir seismic areas). Regional uplift within the Skardu quiet zone may reflect thickening of the thrust prism in response to variations in shear resistance along the detachment.Quaternary glacial lake beds located on the floor of Skardu Basin are generally undeformed in the western half of the basin. Local deformation within the lake beds in the eastern half of the basin is probably due to interaction with glaciers.

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