Fundamentals of Structural Geology is a textbook that emphasizes modern techniques of field data acquisition and analysis, the principles of continuum mechanics, and the mathematical and computational skills necessary to describe, model, and explain quantitatively the deformation of rock in Earth's lithosphere.

With precise location data now available from the Global Positioning System (GPS) and powerful computer systems now transportable in a backpack, the quantity of reproducible field data has increased dramatically. These new data sets demand better methods for describing the geometry of structures, and we address this demand by introducing the basic concepts of differential geometry, which provide unambiguous descriptions of curved lineations and surfaces in three dimensions. Data sets from a variety of field areas are provided via the textbook website to promote the practice of opening field “notebooks” to the entire community of researchers, and as input for student exercises (see below).

Textbooks in structural geology provide elements of continuum mechanics (e.g. separate chapters on stress and strain), but rarely are these concepts tied together with constitutive laws or formulated into equations of motion or equilibrium to solve boundary or initial value problems. These textbooks largely beg the questions: what methodology should one adopt to solve the problems of structural geology; and what are the fundamental constructs that must be acknowledged and honored? These constructs are the conservation laws of mass, momentum, and energy, combined with the constitutive laws for material behavior and the kinematic relationships for strain and rate of deformation.