Africa, the cradle of many old civilizations, is the second largest world continent, and the homeland of nearly one-eighth of the world population. Despite Africa's richness in natural resources, the average income per person, after excluding a few countries, is the lowest all over the world, and the percentage of inhabitants infected with contagious diseases is the highest. Development of Africa to help accommodate the ever-increasing population and secure a reasonable living standard to all inhabitants, though an enormous challenge is extremely necessary. Water is the artery of life, without it all living creatures on earth cannot survive. As such, a thorough knowledge of the meteorological and hydrological processes influencing the yield and quality of the water resources, surface and subsurface, and their distribution and variability in time and space is unavoidable for the overall development of any part of the world. It is highly probable that the said knowledge is at present a top priority to Africa, a continent that has been for so long-and probably still-devastated by the endless ambitions of colonial powers not to forget the corruption and destruction practiced by the internal powers, at least in some countries. The present book "Hydrology and Water Resources of Africa" is written with the aim of bringing together in one volume a fair amount of knowledge any professional involved in hydrology and water resources of Africa needs to know.

Alaska's great size is mirrored by the large number and diversity of its freshwater ecosystems. This volume reviews and synthesizes research on a variety of Alaskan freshwaters including lakes, rivers and wetlands. The vast range of Alaskan habitats ensures that the chapters in this book will provide valuable information for readers interested in freshwaters, particularly nutrient dynamics, biotic adaptations, recovery mechanisms of aquatic biota, stream succession and the management of human-induced changes in aquatic habitats.

Floodplains are ecosystems which are driven by periodic inundation and oscillation between terrestrial and aquatic phases. An understanding of such pulsing systems is only possible by studying both phases and linking the results into an integrated overview.
This book presents the results of a 15-year study of the structure and function of one of the largest tropical floodplains, the Amazon River floodplain. It covers qualitative aspects, e.g., adaptations of aquatic and terrestrial organisms to the flood pulse as well as quantitative aspects, e.g., studies of biomass, primary production, decomposition, and nutrient cycles. The authors interpret their findings and the most important data from other studies under an integrating scientific concept, the Flood Pulse Concept.

Clustering techniques are used to identify group(s) of watersheds which have similar flood characteristics. This book is a comprehensive reference on how to use these techniques for RFFA and is the first of its kind. It provides a detailed account of several recently developed clustering techniques, including those based on fuzzy set theory and artificial neural networks. It also documents research findings on application of clustering techniques to RFFA that remain scattered in various hydrology and water resources journals.

This book provides an updated discussion of snow and glacier hydrology, drawing on the results of recent investigations. It serves as a source of reference at the senior undergraduate or beginning graduate level and stimulates further interest in this important part of the hydrologic cycle.

This book deals with the concept of moments, and how they find application in subsurface hydrologic problems-particularly those dealing with solute transport. Both temporal and spatial moments are dealt with in some detail for a wide variety of problems. Several examples using experimental data, both from laboratory columns and field experiments, are provided to give the readers a clear idea about the scope of this method.

In this book, scientists from eleven countries summarize the results of an EU project (CLIME) that explored the effects of observed and projected changes in the climate on the dynamics of lakes in Northern, Western and Central Europe. Historical measurements from eighteen sites were used to compare the seasonal dynamics of the lakes and to assess their sensitivity to local, regional and global-scale changes in the weather. Simulations using a common set of water quality models, perturbed by six climate-change scenarios, were then used to assess the uncertainties associated with the projected changes in the climate. The book includes chapters on the phenology and modelling of lake ice, the supply and recycling of nitrogen and phosphorus, the flux of dissolved organic carbon and the growth and the seasonal succession of phytoplankton. There are also chapters on the coherent responses of lakes to changes in the circulation of the atmosphere, the development of a web-based Decision Support System and the implications of climate change for the Water Framework Directive.

In recent years there have been a number of catastrophic floods that have resulted in a tragic loss of life. These natural disasters highlight the need to further understand the occurrence phenomena, to improve forecasting techniques, and to develop procedures and contingency plans to minimise the flood impact. This volume contains contributions from the 3rd International Conference on Floods and Flood Management held in Florence in November 1992. The volume is timely and provides an important overview for engineers, scientists, managers and researchers of the latest developments in technology, analysis and management.

Lakes Ladoga and Onego are the greatest lakes in Europe. With a surface area of 17891 km2 and a volume of 902 km3, the former is one of the top fifteen world s freshwater lakes and is only slightly smaller than Lake Ontario. Lake Onego s surface area is 9600 km2 and it has a volume of 292 km3. The watershed of Lake Ladoga (258000 km2) extends through Northwestern European Russia and the eastern part of Finland, including the large Lakes Ilmen and Saimaa, and together these Great European Lakes are an important link in the Caspian-Baltic-White Sea waterway system. Their ecological state affects the water quality of the Neva River, the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea. Thus any changes affect the operational use, environmental protection and management of water resources of a wide area and concern such issues as drinking, recreation, transport and energy.

The anthropogenic impact on the Lake Onego ecosystem is mostly determined by the sewage waters of the Petrozavodsk and Kondopoga industrial centres, while the river inflow makes the most impact on Lake Ladoga. Although the anthropogenic stress on the water ecosystems of the Great European Lakes has decreased over the last 15 years, there has been some simultaneous evidence of global warming. There is not enough current data to identify the climate-induced changes in lake ecosystems, but there is proof that the main cause of lacustrine ecosystem changes is determined by anthropogenic factors.

Coupled thermohydrodynamic and ecosystem models for Lakes Ladoga and Onego have been developed to study the contemporary situation, to understand the main mechanisms of the ecosystem transformation, and to learn what may happen in future under the varying antropogenic impact and climate changes. Lake Ladoga preserves its weak mesotrophic status while Lake Onego can be characterized as oligotrophic. Economic growth during the last seven years has led to the increasing anthropogenic impact on both their ecosystems.

The Great European Lakes are attracting the increasing attention of both researchers and end-users. This book is a synthesis of multifaceted interdisciplinary studies conducted by a team of experts in limnology, geography, biology, mathematical modeling and economy. The editors, Professors Rukhovets and Filatov, are the authors of numerous articles and books and are recognized as the foremost experts in their fields. Professor Rukhovets has been Director of the Institute of Economy and Mathematics in Saint-Petersburg and head of the laboratory of mathematical modeling since 1998 while Professor Filatov is currently Director of the Northern Water Problems Institute in Petrozavodsk, Russia."

Internal wave dynamics in lakes (and oceans) is an important physical component of geophysical fluid mechanics of 'quiescent' water bodies of the Globe. The formation of internal waves requires seasonal stratification of the water bodies and generation by (primarily) wind forces. Because they propagate in basins of variable depth, a generated wave field often experiences transformation from large basin-wide scales to smaller scales. As long as this fission is hydrodynamically stable, nothing dramatic will happen. However, if vertical density gradients and shearing of the horizontal currents in the metalimnion combine to a Richardson number sufficiently small (< 1/4), the light epilimnion water mixes with the water of the hypolimnion, giving rise to vertical diffusion of substances into lower depths. This meromixis is chiefly responsible for the ventilation of the deeper waters and the homogenization of the water through the lake depth. These processes are mainly formed as a result of the physical conditions, but they play biologically an important role in the trophicational state of the lake.

To place this book in perspective it is useful for the reader to be aware of the recent history of the topic of underwater sound generation at the ocean surface by natural mechanisms. A meeting in Lerici, Italy in 1987 was convened within the NATO Advanced Research Workshop series, to bring together underwater acousticians and ocean hydrodynamicists to examine various mechanisms which generate sound naturally at the ocean surface. A record of that meeting was published in the NATO scientific publication series in 1988 under the title 'Sea Surface Sound'. That meeting was successful in inspiring and co ordinating both participants and non-attending colleagues to examine some key issues which were raised during the course of presentations and discussions. The understanding among those present was that another meeting should be convened 3 years hence to report and review progress in the subject. Accordingly the second conference was convened in Cambridge in 1990, whose proceedings are presented here. This volume represents a very gratifying increase in only a 3 year interval in our understanding of a number of physical processes which generate sound at the peripheries of oceans. In fact it represents both the acceleration of singular effort as well as the development of interdisciplinary sophistication and co-operation. The enthusiasm, goodwill, and intense scientific curiosity which characterized the Lerici meeting carried through to Cambridge. The collegial atmosphere established by the participants was perfectly timed to foster another major advance in studies of ocean surface sound.

This book explains clearly how and where groundwater occurs, how it is used and how it is at risk.

This book portrays the Himalayan-born River Saraswati, a legendary river that was the lifeline of a progressive and vibrant society for more than three thousand years. Written in simple language and richly illustrated, it highlights the events that resulted in the robbing of the Saraswati of its water and the end of a wonderful culture. The author weaves a geological narrative out of a mass of data generated by explorers, archaeologists, sedimentologists, geohydrologist, seismologists and remote-sensing specialists. The story explains how a great Himalayan river disappeared and how the Harappan Civilization vanished from the banks of the river Saraswati more than three and half thousand years ago in the wake of tectonic upheavals in the foothills of the Himalaya at a time when the rainfall had drastically declined. And it reveals that nowadays the Saraswati is an extraordinary wide water-less channel coursing through the vast but dry floodplain in western India.

Floods constitute a persistent and serious problem throughout the United States and many other parts of the world. They are responsible for losses amounting to billions of dollars and scores of deaths annually. Virtually all parts of the nation--coastal, moun tainous and rural--are affected by them. Two aspects of the problem of flooding that have long been topics of scientific inquiry are flood frequency and risk analyses. Many new, even improved, tech niques have recently been developed for performing these analyses. Nevertheless, actual experience points out that the frequency of say a 100-year flood, in lieu of being encountered on the average once in one hundred years, may be as little as once in 25 years. It is there fore appropriate to pause and ask where we are, where we are going and where we ought to be going with regard to the technology of flood frequency and risk analyses. One way to address these questions is to provide a forum where people from all quarters of the world can assemble, discuss and share their experience and expertise pertaining to flood frequency and risk analyses. This is what constituted the motivation for organizing the International Symposium on Flood Frequency and Risk Analyses held May 14-17, 1986, at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana."

A wide variety of problems are associated with the flow of shallow water, such as atmospheric flows, tides, storm surges, river and coastal flows, lake flows, tsunamis. Numerical simulation is an effective tool in solving them and a great variety of numerical methods are available. The first part of the book summarizes the basic physics of shallow-water flow needed to use numerical methods under various conditions. The second part gives an overview of possible numerical methods, together with their stability and accuracy properties as well as with an assessment of their performance under various conditions. This enables the reader to select a method for particular applications. Correct treatment of boundary conditions (often neglected) is emphasized. The major part of the book is about two-dimensional shallow-water equations but a discussion of the 3-D form is included. The book is intended for researchers and users of shallow-water models in oceanographic and meteorological institutes, hydraulic engineering and consulting. It also provides a major source of information for applied and numerical mathematicians.

Floods constitute a persistent and serious problem throughout the United States and many other parts of the world. They are responsible for losses amounting to billions of dollars and scores of deaths annually. Virtually all parts of the nation--coastal, moun tainous and rural--are affected by them. Two aspects of the problem of flooding that have long been topics of scientific inquiry are flood frequency and risk analyses. Many new, even improved, tech niques have recently been developed for performing these analyses. Nevertheless, actual experience points out that the frequency of say a 100-year flood, in lieu of being encountered on the average once in one hundred years, may be as little as once in 25 years. It is therefore appropriate to pause and ask where we are, where we are going and where we ought to be going with regard to the technology of flood frequency and risk analyses. One way to address these ques tions is to provide a forum where people from all quarters of the world can assemble, discuss and share their experience and expertise pertaining to flood frequency and risk analyses. This is what con stituted the motivation for organizing the International Symposium on Flood Frequency and Risk Analyses held May 14-17, 1986, at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana."

Numerical simulation models have become indispensable in hydro- and environmental sciences and engineering. This monograph presents a general introduction to numerical simulation in environment water, based on the solution of the equations for groundwater flow and transport processes, for multiphase and multicomponent flow and transport processes in the subsurface as well as for flow and transport processes in surface waters. It displays in detail the state of the art of discretization and stabilization methods (e.g. finite-difference, finite-element, and finite-volume methods), parallel methods, and adaptive methods as well as fast solvers, with particular focus on explaining the interactions of the different methods. The book gives a brief overview of various information-processing techniques and demonstrates the interactions of the numerical methods with the information-processing techniques, in order to achieve efficient numerical simulations for a wide range of applications in environment water.

Two basic tools for integrated management of the environment are modeling and environmental data. Both tools were available and valid in the past; however, the recent requirements for integrated environmental management have also led to a significant evolution of both modeling procedures and data management systems. Regarding these advances, current literature provides vast amounts of studies on modeling of different environmental processes. However, issues related to data management systems are barely touched on in a comprehensive framework. Data requirements and data availability are mentioned merely as subtopics in most environmental studies, although it is well recognized that data constitute the basis for all environmental management activities. In particular, there is no book yet published that focuses exclusively on data management systems. In this respect, the present book fills an important gap by providing a systematic approach to various aspects of environmental data management. The contents of the book follow the basic steps that constitute an environmental data management system. These steps cover in sequence: collection of environmental data for assessing air quality, surface water quality and solid waste management; reliability considerations in data collection; storage, handling and retrieval of available data; transfer of data into information via data analysis and environmental modeling; and finally the use of available data in decision-making for environmental management. This volume will be useful to faculty members, researchers, professional engineers, planners and managers, and graduate students, who are involved in environmental management, data collection anddissemination, and information retrieval. It will also be of interest to research and data centres, international programmes and organizations related to environmental management.

Floods constitute a persistent and serious problem throughout the United States and many other parts of the world. They are respon sible for losses amounting to billions of dollars and scores of deaths annually. Virtually all parts of the nation--coastal, mountainous and rural--are affected by them. Two aspects of the problem of flooding that have long been topics of scientific inquiry are flood frequency and risk analyses. Many new, even improved, techniques have recently been developed for performing these analyses. Nevertheless, actual experience points out that the frequency of say a 100-year flood, in lieu of being encountered on the average once in one hundred years, may be as little as once in 25 years. It is therefore appropriate to pause and ask where we are, where we are going and where we ought to be going with regard to the technology of flood frequency and risk analyses. One way to address these questions is to provide a forum where people from all quarters of the world can assemble, discuss and share their experience and expertise pertaining to flood frequency and risk analyses. This is what constituted the motivation for organizing the International Symposium on Flood Frequency and Risk Analyses held May 14-17, 1986, at Louisiana State University, Bat-on Rouge, Louisiana."

Lake Titicaca, because of its area and volume and its situation at high attitude within the tropics, is a unique hydrological site in the world. It should be noted that it stands at the transition point between two very distinct geographical regions: the desert fringe of the Pacific coast to the west and the great Amazonian forest extending to the Atlantic coast to the east. Many scientists have been attracted to the lake in the past because of its unusual limnological features. In this book the editors have compiled an exhaustive review of current knowledge from the existing literature and from the results of more recent observations. It is certain that this book will become the essential reference work for scientists wanting to make progress in revealing the lake's secrets. It can be stated unequivocally that this work constitutes a complete review of the present state of knowledge on Lake Titicaca and that it provides the latest results of research on this habitat.

The waters of the Indo-Pacific were at the centre of the global expansion of marine capture fisheries in the twentieth century, yet surprisingly little has been written about this subject from a historical perspective. This book, the first major study of the history of fishing in Asia and Oceania, presents the case-studies completed through the History of Marine Animal Populations (HMAP) initiative. It examines the marine environmental history and historical marine ecology of the Indo-Pacific during a period that witnessed the dramatic escalation of industrial fishing in these seas.

Volume 1: (edited by Keith W. Hipel) In this landmark collection of papers, highly respected scientists and engineers from around the world present the latest research results in extreme value analyses for floods and droughts. Two approaches that are commonly employed in flood frequency analyses are the maximum annual flood and partial duration series or peak over threshold procedures. Recent theoretical advances as well as illustrative applications are described in detail for each of these approaches. Additionally, droughts and storms are systematically studied using appropriate probabilistic models. A major part of the volume is devoted to frequency analyses and fitting extreme value distributions to hydrological data. Other thought-provoking topics include regionalization techniques, distributed models, entropy and fractal analysis. Volume 1 is of interest to researchers, teachers, students and practitioners who wish to place themselves at the leading edge of flood frequency and drought analyses. Volume 2: (edited by Keith W. Hipel) World renowned scientists present valuable contributions to stochastic and statistical modelling of groundwater and surface water systems. The philosophy of probabilistic modelling in the hydrological sciences is put into proper perspective and the importance of stochastic differential equations in the environmental sciences is explained and illustrated. The new research ideas put forward in groundwater modelling will assist decision makers in tackling challenging problems such as controlling pollution of underground aquifers and obtaining adequate water supplies. Additionally, different types of stochastic models are used in modelling a range ofinteresting surface water problems. Other topics covered in this landmark volume include stochastic optimization, moment analysis, carbon dioxide modelling and rainfall prediction. Volume 2 is of interest to researchers, teachers, students and practitioners who wish to be at the leading edge of stochastic and statistical modelling in the environmental sciences. Volume 3: (edited by Keith W. Hipel; A. Ian McLeod; U.S. Panu; Vijay P. Singh) International experts from around the globe present a rich variety of intriguing developments in time series analysis in hydrology and environmental engineering. Climatic change is of great concern to everyone and significant contributions to this challenging research topic are put forward by internationally renowned authors. A range of interesting applications in hydrological forecasting are given for case studies in reservoir operation in North America, Asia and South America. Additionally, progress in entropy research is described and entropy concepts are applied to various water resource systems problems. Neural networks are employed for forecasting runoff and water demand. Moreover, graphical, nonparametric and parametric trend analyses methods are compared and applied to water quality time series. Other topics covered in this landmark volume include spatial analyses, spectral analyses and different methods for stream-flow modelling. Volume 3 constitutes an invaluable resource for researchers, teachers, students and practitioners who wish to be at the forefront of time series analysis in the environmental sciences. Volume 4: (edited by Keith W. Hipel; Liping Fang) In this landmark set of papers, experts from around the world present the latest andmost promising approaches to both the theory and practice of effective environmental management. To achieve sustainable development, organizations and individual citizens must comply with environmental laws and regulations. Accordingly, a major contribution of this book is the presentation of original techniques for designing effective environmental policies, regulations, inspection procedures and monitoring systems. Interesting methods for modelling risk and decision making problems are discussed from an environmental management perspective. Moreover, knowledge-based techniques for handling environmental problems are also investigated. Finally, the last main part of the book describes optimal approaches to reservoir operation and control that take into account appropriate multiple objectives. Volume 4 is of direct interest to researchers, teachers, students and practitioners concerned with the latest developments in environmental management and sustainable development.

This book is geared for advanced level research in the general subject area of remote sensing and modeling as they apply to the coastal marine environment. The various chapters focus on the latest scientific and technical advances in the service of better understanding coastal marine environments for their care, conservation and management. Chapters specifically deal with advances in remote sensing coastal classifications, environmental monitoring, digital ocean technological advances, geophysical methods, geoacoustics, X-band radar, risk assessment models, GIS applications, real-time modeling systems, and spatial modeling. Readers will find this book useful because it summarizes applications of new research methods in one of the world s most dynamic and complicated environments. Chapters in this book will be of interest to specialists in the coastal marine environment who deals with aspects of environmental monitoring and assessment via remote sensing techniques and numerical modeling."