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Role of water in urban ecology
Journal of Hydrology, 75 (1984/1985) 395--400
395
Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., Amsterdam - - P r i n t e d in The Netherlands
Book Reviews
Role of Water in Urban Ecology. H. Hengeveld and C. de Vocht (Editors). Developments in Landscape Management and Urban Planning, Vol. 5. (reprinted from Urban Ecology, Vol. 6). Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam--Oxford--NewYork, N.Y., 1982, viii + 360 pp., Dfl. 185.00/US $ 86.00 (hardcover). The Editors of this book have made a commendable effort toward formulating something new and incipient out of traditionally separate disciplinary areas.
The book's material grew out of a 1979 symposium in Amsterdam, which attempted to review and interrelate knowledge, ideas and suggestions from different scientific and applied disciplines such as engineering, public health, biology, planning, geography, water management and agriculture. Fourteen of its 28 participants were from The Netherlands. No explicit definition of urban ecology or of the role of water in it was attempted. The implicit, partly formed concept of the book is part of a trend of emerging interdisciplinary ideas about land and water and their development for which The Netherlands has been a prolific origin and incubator. The symposium's participants contributed initial material. The initial material was reworked by the Editors, with review by the participants, to make the book more like a monograph than a collection of individual papers. The ideas expressed do theoretically belong together in some continuum which we may call urban ecology, and certain chapters build composite arguments brilliantly upon successive ideas from different sources. However, like any bold early attempt, the book has gaps and raw spots. The conceptual frameworks within which the materials from different disciplines and from different countries have been presented are just too divergent for any editor to synthesize entirely into a monograph. The book's initial chapters discuss general subjects such as water supply, urban climate, flood control, water quality, h u m a n perceptions about urban waters and ecological theory. After a transitional chapter on "Development and Planning" are four wonderfully diverse and well-portrayed case studies of water-related urban developments in different countries: multipurpose lakes in a British new town, new towns in Netherlands polders, Los Angeles with its water supply, and protection of natural hydrologic systems on a coastal island. The most coherent groups of chapters are those that draw heavily on work in The Netherlands. They share a conceptual framework, because they all deal with the integrated actions of man-made and natural systems in the unique Dutch polder landscape. A few of them are really the only ones done with the radically broad "ecological" viewpoint which is the implicit construct of the book.
396 The book should not be seen as a textbook or an introduction. It has substantial value as a reference on a broad variety of topics dealing with urban hydrology, urban ecology and urban development. (The several chapters on Netherlands work are particularly worthwhile to those not familiar with this prolific source of new concepts.) It has particular value in tantalizing and provoking those who would try to formulate cross-disciplinary ideas about urban ecology and hydrology. The book does not presume to have found any ultimate answers. But it has placed in powerful and provocative juxtaposition a remarkable range of materials that have ordinarily been in the provinces of relatively isolated specialists. It is a galaxy of valuable ideas, pulled together at great effort and still only beginning to take on an overall form. BRUCE K. FERGUSON (Athens, Ga.)
Isotope Techniques in the Hydrological Assessment of Potential Sites for the Disposal of High-level Radioactive Wastes. Technical Report Series No. 228. International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.), Vienna, 1983. Flowing groundwater is a likely medium in which radionuclides could be transported from a waste disposal site to the accessible environment: Potential sites are thus limited to rocks with minimal capacity to transmit water and radionuclides. Conventional techniques for hydrologic investigations were developed for aquifers and they frequently are of little use in characterizing very tight rock. Hydrologists in several countries have recognized the limitations of conventional methods and incorporated isotope techniques into their programs for studying potential waste disposal sites. The International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.) in its role as an advocate of peaceful uses of atomic energy, has long encouraged and been involved in the development and application of nuclear techniques in hydrology. Recognizing the applicability of such techniques in low-flow, low-permeability regimes, the I.A.E.A., making use of consultant and advisory groups convened for the purpose, prepared this report. The report contains 13 chapters. Chapters 1--4 provide an overview of the book, introduce the problems of nuclear waste disposal, and summarize the principles of tracer movements and of the chemical evolution of groundwaters, Chapters 5--12 describe the isotope hydrology techniques themselves, while Chapter 13 presents brief conclusions. Following an introductory first chapter, Chapter 2 provides the general scope of the volume and summarizes the origin and properties of high-level nuclear wastes and options for their disposal. Chapter 3 introduces the principles of groundwater and tracer movement, focusing on those processes which retard tracer movement relative to that of groundwater. Geometric (diffusion into dead-end pores) and chemical (described using linear isotherms) mechanisms are emphasized along with the effects of dispersion at
395
Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., Amsterdam - - P r i n t e d in The Netherlands
Book Reviews
Role of Water in Urban Ecology. H. Hengeveld and C. de Vocht (Editors). Developments in Landscape Management and Urban Planning, Vol. 5. (reprinted from Urban Ecology, Vol. 6). Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam--Oxford--NewYork, N.Y., 1982, viii + 360 pp., Dfl. 185.00/US $ 86.00 (hardcover). The Editors of this book have made a commendable effort toward formulating something new and incipient out of traditionally separate disciplinary areas.
The book's material grew out of a 1979 symposium in Amsterdam, which attempted to review and interrelate knowledge, ideas and suggestions from different scientific and applied disciplines such as engineering, public health, biology, planning, geography, water management and agriculture. Fourteen of its 28 participants were from The Netherlands. No explicit definition of urban ecology or of the role of water in it was attempted. The implicit, partly formed concept of the book is part of a trend of emerging interdisciplinary ideas about land and water and their development for which The Netherlands has been a prolific origin and incubator. The symposium's participants contributed initial material. The initial material was reworked by the Editors, with review by the participants, to make the book more like a monograph than a collection of individual papers. The ideas expressed do theoretically belong together in some continuum which we may call urban ecology, and certain chapters build composite arguments brilliantly upon successive ideas from different sources. However, like any bold early attempt, the book has gaps and raw spots. The conceptual frameworks within which the materials from different disciplines and from different countries have been presented are just too divergent for any editor to synthesize entirely into a monograph. The book's initial chapters discuss general subjects such as water supply, urban climate, flood control, water quality, h u m a n perceptions about urban waters and ecological theory. After a transitional chapter on "Development and Planning" are four wonderfully diverse and well-portrayed case studies of water-related urban developments in different countries: multipurpose lakes in a British new town, new towns in Netherlands polders, Los Angeles with its water supply, and protection of natural hydrologic systems on a coastal island. The most coherent groups of chapters are those that draw heavily on work in The Netherlands. They share a conceptual framework, because they all deal with the integrated actions of man-made and natural systems in the unique Dutch polder landscape. A few of them are really the only ones done with the radically broad "ecological" viewpoint which is the implicit construct of the book.
396 The book should not be seen as a textbook or an introduction. It has substantial value as a reference on a broad variety of topics dealing with urban hydrology, urban ecology and urban development. (The several chapters on Netherlands work are particularly worthwhile to those not familiar with this prolific source of new concepts.) It has particular value in tantalizing and provoking those who would try to formulate cross-disciplinary ideas about urban ecology and hydrology. The book does not presume to have found any ultimate answers. But it has placed in powerful and provocative juxtaposition a remarkable range of materials that have ordinarily been in the provinces of relatively isolated specialists. It is a galaxy of valuable ideas, pulled together at great effort and still only beginning to take on an overall form. BRUCE K. FERGUSON (Athens, Ga.)
Isotope Techniques in the Hydrological Assessment of Potential Sites for the Disposal of High-level Radioactive Wastes. Technical Report Series No. 228. International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.), Vienna, 1983. Flowing groundwater is a likely medium in which radionuclides could be transported from a waste disposal site to the accessible environment: Potential sites are thus limited to rocks with minimal capacity to transmit water and radionuclides. Conventional techniques for hydrologic investigations were developed for aquifers and they frequently are of little use in characterizing very tight rock. Hydrologists in several countries have recognized the limitations of conventional methods and incorporated isotope techniques into their programs for studying potential waste disposal sites. The International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.) in its role as an advocate of peaceful uses of atomic energy, has long encouraged and been involved in the development and application of nuclear techniques in hydrology. Recognizing the applicability of such techniques in low-flow, low-permeability regimes, the I.A.E.A., making use of consultant and advisory groups convened for the purpose, prepared this report. The report contains 13 chapters. Chapters 1--4 provide an overview of the book, introduce the problems of nuclear waste disposal, and summarize the principles of tracer movements and of the chemical evolution of groundwaters, Chapters 5--12 describe the isotope hydrology techniques themselves, while Chapter 13 presents brief conclusions. Following an introductory first chapter, Chapter 2 provides the general scope of the volume and summarizes the origin and properties of high-level nuclear wastes and options for their disposal. Chapter 3 introduces the principles of groundwater and tracer movement, focusing on those processes which retard tracer movement relative to that of groundwater. Geometric (diffusion into dead-end pores) and chemical (described using linear isotherms) mechanisms are emphasized along with the effects of dispersion at