Book review: Groundwater Resources: Sustainability, Management, and Restoration, by Neven Kresic (McGraw-Hill Profession
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Book review: Groundwater Resources: Sustainability, Management, and Restoration, by Neven Kresic (McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing, 2009) J. F. Devlin Keywords Review (book) . Groundwater resources . Groundwater management
J. F. Devlin ()) University of Kansas - Geology, Lindley Hall rm. 120 1475 Jayhawk Blvd, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA e-mail: [email protected] Tel.: +1-785-8644994 Fax: +1-785-8645276
this is the chapter on climate change. Kresic reviews natural climatic cycles, including those quantified by Milankovich, and the El Nino phenomenon. The chapter goes on to discuss the history of droughts from social and scientific viewpoints, and anthropogenic influences on climate. The chapter ends with a section discussing climatic impacts on surface and groundwater resources— though the impact on groundwater was only minimally dealt with, a bit disappointing in a book entitled Groundwater Resources: Sustainability, Management, and Restoration. Regardless, the range of topics reviewed in the book makes it a good reference for people wanting an overview of groundwater issues. On the other hand, the book is likely to fail in its attempt to satisfy the more technically minded students and professionals. Equations and graphs appear throughout the text, but they are often presented only to augment the review rather than extend an argument in a didactic fashion. Many of the equations are sufficiently complex so that only experienced individuals would find them either familiar or helpful. No attempt is made to illustrate their use in examples, and no exercises are provided by the author. Therefore, despite its relevance for hydrogeologists, this book is not suitable for use as a primary textbook for hydrogeology courses. Having said this, it is conceded the book occasionally delves into quantitative material in considerable detail. For example, the groundwater quality chapter presents the mass action equation, and equations for organic compound solubility estimation from Raoult’s Law, the Henry’s Law calculation for volatilization, sorption according to linear and nonlinear isotherms, and a detailed development of contaminant transport processes culminating in the presentation of an approximate solution to the advection dispersion equation. The placement of these topics in the groundwater quality chapter is questionable, but the discussion is arguably the strongest technical section of the book. Again, no example calculations are presented, so individuals new to the field would likely need another source to actually put the concepts to use. Also, the groundwater quality chapter ends with a discussion of the shortcomings of the approximate solution just presented; valuable information but presented in a fashion that somewhat weakens the earlier material. The reader is left wondering why the solution was presented at all if is too approximate for general use.
Hydrogeology Journal (2013) 21: 945–946
DOI 10.1007/s10040-013-0963-6
Groundwater Resources: Sustainability, Management, and Restoration, published in 2009 by McGraw Hil
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