Volume 68 of Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry reviews Oxygen in the Solar System, an element that is so critically important in so many ways to planetary science. The book is based on three open workshops:

Oxygen in the Terrestrial Planets, held in Santa Fe, NM July 20-23, 2004;

Oxygen in Asteroids and Meteorites, held in Flagstaff, AZ June 2-3, 2005;

and Oxygen in Earliest Solar System Materials and Processes (and including the outer planets and comets), held in Gatlinburg, TN September 19-22, 2005.

As a consequence of the cross-cutting approach, the final book spans a wide range of fields relating to oxygen, from the stellar nucleosynthesis of oxygen, to its occurrence in the interstellar medium, to the oxidation and isotopic record preserved in 4.56 Ga grains formed at the Solar System's birth, to its abundance and speciation in planets large and small, to its role in the petrologic and physical evolution of the terrestrial planets.

Contents:

Introduction

Oxygen isotopes in the early Solar System - A historical perspective

Abundance, notation, and fractionation of light stable isotopes

Nucleosynthesis and chemical evolution of oxygen

Oxygen in the interstellar medium

Oxygen in the Sun

Redox conditions in the solar nebula: observational, experimental, and theoretical constraints

Oxygen isotopes of chondritic components

Mass-independent oxygen isotope variation in the solar nebula

Oxygen and other volatiles in the giant planets and their satellites

Oxygen in comets and interplanetary dust particles

Oxygen and asteroids

Oxygen isotopes in asteroidal materials

Oxygen isotopic composition and chemical correlations in meteorites and the terrestrial planets

Record of low-temperature alteration in asteroids

The oxygen cycle of the terrestrial planets: insights into the processing and history of oxygen in surface environments

Redox conditions on small bodies, the Moon and Mars

Terrestrial oxygen isotope variations and their implications for planetary lithospheres

Basalts as probes of planetary interior redox state

Rheological consequences of redox state