The volume starts with comparative reservoir limnology and deals with problems relating to tropical, semi-arid and temperate reservoirs. The second part concerns mathematical models of reservoirs, including new techniques for investigating their limnology. These cover physical, chemical and biological phenomena, remote sensing and the use of modelling to establish the most efficient strategy for water quality sampling. In the third, on reservoir water quality management, the potential available in fish population management for biomanipulation of reservoir water quality is introduced. Also included is a valuable section on a wide range of water quality measures, coming from the well-known Czech Hydrobiological Laboratory. Finally the editors summarise the present state of reservoir limnology. This book will be of interest to hydrobiologists and aquatic ecologists, reservoir and sanitary engineers, fisheries officers, postgraduate teaching, and the water industry dealing with drinking water supply and will provide insight into regulated rivers. It draws information from all over the world and is relevant to the whole world.

Our knowledge of the limnology of the waters situated, roughly, between the tropics of cancer and of capricorn, has depended for a long time on the expedition-approach, and therefore developed in a rather irregular, haphazard way, with the personal incentive of a small number of individuals as the main driving force. Things slowly started to change in the 1950s, and at an accelerating rate in the 1960s and 1970s. The IBP, and later the SCOPE and MAB programs, whatever their shortcomings are or may have been, promoted in-depth research of a small number of tropical lakes. For one thing, they showed the need for the creation of in situ limnological research institutes. When, in the 1970s, limnological research facilities or their nuclei began to appear in the tropical zones of all continents, an interesting phenomenon occurred: while most of the young native limnologists had received their training in advanced centres or courses held in the temperate (and developed) climatic zones, quite a few of their former supervisors or their associates became interested in warm lakes and rivers as well, using the new or newly expanded local institutes. We are, today, still in this phase and it is, apparently, expanding even further. Although not all experiments of this kind lead to happy marriages, a few were quite successful, and several papers contained in the present volume are hoped to reflect this.