Aqueous organic geochemistry at high temperature/high pressure.

It is the purpose of this chapter to provide a description of the fate and chemical alterations of organic matter under hydrothermal conditions, with a brief overview of the geographic localities where these processes have been studied to date. Two major but overlapping aspects will be considered: (a) Alteration and degradation processes and reactions, both reductive and oxidative, and (b) synthesis processes and reactions that are primarily reductive.