Inland Flood Hazards: Human, Riparian and Aquatic Communities

Book reviews

erosion/sedimentation patterns. In addition, hazards to humans from mountain river processes have been the source of a great deal of research. These studies seek to understand and forecast hazardous situations, provide mitigation strategies (for better or for worse) and inform societies as to the specific risks involved with various management schemes. Wohl has summarized a large number of worldwide case studies of human interactions with mountain rivers. These summaries should be an excellent starting point for future synthetic theories of fluvial-societal relationships. Among the many strengths of this new book are a few potential shortcomings. Some important river concepts, such as the development and modeling of channel hydraulic geometry, receive very little page space in contrast to well-treated topics such as bed load transport mechanics. There also seems to be a variable level of quantification throughout the book, with some topics such as flow resistance including many sets of physically based and/or empirical equations, whereas other subjects are entirely qualitative. There are a few small instances where figures are inadequately described, but these cases are minor compared to the wonderful array of photographs and illustrations of many mountain river environments. These slight reservations aside, Mountain Rivers is a thoroughly useful and enlightening book. The brevity of some subjects is counterbalanced by an enormous breadth of topical diversity, making this book an excellent contribution to many different groups of river scientists. Wohl has written an engaging text with an enormous number of highlights of what is and what is not known about mountain rivers. This book will be an important addition to river investigators’ shelves, where it will likely be so often used as to become, like my copy, dogeared and weatherworn.

Mark Fonstad Department of Geography, Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos, TX 78666-4616, USA E-mail address: [email protected] PII: S 0 1 6 9 - 5 5 5 X ( 0 ) 0 0 1 7 0 - 2

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Inland Flood Hazards: Human, Riparian and Aquatic Communities Ellen E. Wohl, (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2000. xiv and 498 pages, 101 figures (b & w photographs and b & w diagrams), 29 tables. Hardback, UK £70.00, U.S. $110.00, ISBN 0 521 62419 3 Inland Flood Hazards is a welcome addition to the suite of books recently written or edited by Ellen Wohl, a geomorphologist well known for her work on step pools in streams and rivers. Unlike her other recent book, Mountain Rivers (also reviewed in this issue), this book is a collection of papers from a number of well-qualified geographers, geologists, hydrologists, engineers, and ecologists. Nevertheless, Wohl’s imprint here is strong, in both the natures of the chapters included and in the list of authors represented. The book is comprised of a short preface, an Introduction, seven sections containing an uneven number of chapters, and a Conclusion. The preface lays out the raison d’eˆtre for the book, which is ‘‘designed to provide both a general reference on flood hazards inland from coastal regions and within each chapter, a comprehensive review of existing knowledge through specific case studies’’ ( p. xi). Unlike many edited volumes, both the Introduction and Conclusion were written as distinct chapters by Wohl, and thus, they provide a nice set of ‘‘bookends’’ that introduce and wrap-up the foundations of the book. Although chapters here review and discuss a variety of study areas throughout the book, attention is particularly given to three disparate drainage basins (the Colorado River basin of the United States and Mexico, the Tone River basin of Japan, and the lower reaches of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers in Bangladesh) in order to illustrate the diversity of aspects of inland flood hazards. In her Introduction—Inland Flood Hazards chapter—Wohl sets the stage for the remainder of the book. She provides definitions of the scope and nature of flood hazards described in the chapters of the book, describes the changing spatial nature of flood hazards as related to position within a drainage basin, briefly reviews the history of flood hazards and flood mitigation, describes the interactions between channel changes associated with floods and land-use patterns,

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and introduces the three drainage basins noted above. Because of the extremely broad nature of several of these topics, some readers may feel that some topics were given short shrift, but a strong bibliography directs them to a more detailed coverage of the topics in question. The section on Physical Controls on Flooding, contains three chapters that represent some of the best materials in the book, from the perspective of their geomorphologic content. Hirschboeck, Ely, and Maddox provide an excellent overview of the Hydroclimatology of Meteorlogic Floods utilizing a scaledependent perspective. Cenderelli’s chapter on Floods from Natural and Artificial Dam Failures is a solid overview on this topic in the literature. He covers all forms of natural and artificial dam failures, including the too-often overlooked beaver dam. Canadian readers may feel that more attention could have been given here to the extensive body of work by John Clague and Steve Evans on floods from natural dam failures (only three of their collaborative works are cited). Wohl offers the final chapter in the section, Anthropogenic Impacts on Flood Hazards, and it provides a thorough review of the diversity of ways in which humans have influenced flood regimes and hazards. Flood Processes and Effects contains three excellent chapters on Inundation Hydrology, by Mertes; Geomorphic Effects of Floods, by editor Wohl; and Contaminant Transport Hazards during Flooding, by Finley. The latter chapter is one of the few in the book that does not ‘‘fit’’ within the three specified drainage basins framework, but instead, offers insightful case studies from three mid-latitude river basins in the United Kingdom (the river Tyne) and the USA (the Mississippi River in Illinois, and the Clark Fork River system near Butte, MT). Each chapter provides good topical coverage and concludes with an up-to-date, thorough reference list. The third major section, Biological Flood Processes and Effects, contains two chapters. Floods, Flood Control, and Bottomland Vegetation, by Friedman and Auble, approach flood hazards from the perspective of bottomland vegetation rather than from a human perspective. This is an interesting perspective, but raises the question of what actually constitutes a flood ‘‘hazard’’ versus a flood ‘‘result’’. It also reverses perspectives by defining flood hazards as being the result of the nonoccurrence of floods result-

ing from human intervention in the fluvial system. This perspective again challenges the normal view that hazards only exist in the context of humans and human society, not from the perspective of bottomland vegetation. This general theme continues in the chapter on Flooding and Aquatic Ecosystems, by Wydoski and Wick, where again, both the effects of flooding and the limitation or cessation of flooding resulting from human interference with natural systems are considered hazards. The following section, Effects of Floods on Human Communities, contains but one chapter, and should have been merged with a subsequent section. The chapter, The Effects of Variable River Flow on Human Communities, by Merritts, is a useful overview, but deserved a better fate than that of a ‘‘bridge’’ between two largely disparate sections. Responses to Flooding contains three chapters, none of which seems to fit the section title. A better title might have been Flood Hydrology and Paleohydrology. Each chapter (Prediction and Modeling of Flood Hydrology and Hydraulics, by Ramirez; Flood Frequency Analysis and Statistical Estimation of Flood Risk, by Stedinger; and Paleoflood Hydrology and the Estimation of Extreme Floods, by Vic Baker) provides a useful summary of past works on those topics, and the three chapters could be taken together to provide an excellent set of background readings for a seminar on flood hydrology. Three chapters comprise the following section on Flood Hazard Mitigation Strategies. Watson and Biedenharn use the Mississippi River basin in the USA and the Tone River basin in Japan as case studies to illustrate structural approaches to flood hazard mitigation in Comparison of Flood Management Strategies. One is left wondering, however, if all conceivable strategies are employed in these two basins, and if a more general review would have better served the purpose of the book’s readers. In her chapter Nonstructural Mitigation of Flood Hazards, Gruntfest offers a broader, more diverse overview that nicely serves its purpose whilst also utilizing several case studies which also largely fit into the book’s three-basin framework. Chapter 16, Planning for Flow Requirements to Sustain Stream Biota, by Stalnaker and Wick, reads more as an advocacy statement or position paper than as a review paper similar to others in the book, and seems distinctly out of place. It also propagates the

Book reviews

perspective of nonoccurrence of floods as a hazard to native biota. The last major section, Societal Controls on Human Responses to Flood Hazards, contains two chapters. The first, Cultural Perspectives of Flooding, by Laituri, comes at a curious point in the book. Given the way in which several chapters in the book attempt to redefine flood hazards, it would have been particularly appropriate for this chapter to be placed at an earlier point in the book, perhaps following Wohl’s chapter on Anthropogenic Impacts on Flood Hazards. Or conversely, the chapter could have frankly been omitted without losing the overall focus of the book. Its postmodern flavor seems strangely ‘‘out-of-sync’’ with the scientific flavor of the bulk of the chapters in the book. This chapter is followed by Urban Planning for Flood Hazards, Risk, and Vulnerability, by Hamilton and Joaquin. It provides a good summary of ways that urban planning has successfully accomplished its purpose with respect to the reduction of flood hazard, risk, and vulnerability. It does not, however, address the issue of reducing those factors in nonurban areas, which although characterized by lower densities of population, nonetheless also face hazards, risk, and vulnerability from flooding. Wohl’s Conclusion chapter, Floods in the 21st Century, is a short (four pages) summary of the challenges associated with flood hazards around the world. It is too short to do justice to this topic, and was a disappointing end to an otherwise largely engaging book. Would I recommend this book? Yes indeed, in spite of the quirks described above, and elaborated on here. The pedagogic use of the three primary drainage basins as examples provides a wealth of insight into inland flood hazards, but also represents one difficulty with this book. No broadly applicable examples come from areas of rivers in subarctic terrain such as northern Canada and Siberia, for example, nor from mild mid-latitude climates such as western Europe or the eastern United States. Furthermore, while the example of the Colorado River basin as a representative of basins in arid environments is a useful one, it may not satisfy readers who would wish for a discussion of flood hazards on arid rivers in areas with differing physiographic, economic, and/or sociopolitical settings. This is, however, a minor quibble in that the use of the three basins as an encompassing framework does prove useful in many cases, as in Mertes’

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chapter where her work on the Amazon Basin and the Altamaha River in Georgia, USA, is skillfully integrated into the broader picture provided by the three primary drainage basins. Another potential pitfall for readers of this book is their own expectations. The book’s title implies the examination of hazards resulting from flooding. However, as described above, the emphasis in the chapters dealing with aquatic and riparian communities primarily focuses on the absence, or nonoccurrence, of floods due to human regulation and manipulation of river flow. The resulting ecological impacts, resulting from a reduction or complete removal of periodic flooding, are indeed hazardous to the aquatic and riparian communities, but do not constitute ‘‘hazards’’ in the minds of many in the hazard community who apply the term ‘‘hazard’’ only in the context of human societies. While the problem may lie with how ‘‘hazards’’ are defined, the fact remains that readers who study this book to learn of the results of flooding (rather than nonoccurrence of flooding), will be disappointed by some of the book’s contents. Nevertheless, Wohl is to be congratulated for bringing together such a disparate set of perspectives on what constitutes inland flood hazards and for expanding our view of the flood-hazard spectrum. As you would expect from Cambridge University Press, the book is attractively packaged and produced with a minimum number of typographical errors. It would serve as an excellent source of reading for a graduate seminar on floods and flood hazards, and is a fine example of the ability of the discipline of geomorphology to serve as a central ‘‘anchor point’’ for interdisciplinary environmental studies. The cost of the volume will, unfortunately, largely restrict it to libraries in relatively large research institutions. It should, however, be well used and will offer many hours at copy machines for graduate students around the world. David R. Butler Department of Geography, Southwest Texas State University, 601 University Drive, ELA 120-B, San Marcos, TX 78666-4616, USA PII: S 0 1 6 9 - 5 5 5 X ( 0 ) 0 0 1 7 1 - 4