Today, the geologic and economic significances of coalbed gas resources have been realized, and coalbed methane developments have been achieved great success in North America and Australia. The coalbed methane industry of Qinshui Basin in China now understands that the key parameters controlling reserves and productibility are thermal maturity, maceral composition, gas content, coal thickness, fracture density, in-situ stress, permeability, burial history, and hydrologic setting. However, all of these factors are dominated or influenced by the tectonic events during coalification and after coalification.

The main focus of this special issue will be on the new and the existing data on tectonic history and the origin of gas in order to promote development of coal-bed gas. The special issue will summarize the latest developments of coal-bed gas genesis, with a special emphasis given to the scientific and the technical results obtained in the last five years. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Mountain-basin coupling analysis
• Thermal maturity of organic matter
• Tectonothermal evolution of sedimentation basin
• Thermochronology of basin burial history
• Mechanisms of gas adsorption and desorption
• Microstructure features of tectonically deformed coal
• Macromolecule structure and nanoscale pore structures of coal
• High-temperature and high-pressure deformation experiment of coal
• Tectonic chronology of coal-bearing sedimentary basin

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jgr/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: