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Target Readership	Sen. Secondary					For help with criteria, click here
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Contents:

1 - What is ecological science?; 2 - How does scale affect what we see?; 3 - Wonderful water: linkages from the atom to the biosphere; 4 - What is in lakes?; 5 - What is in rivers and streams?; 6 - How are population numbers and structure affected by dispersal?; 7 - Why do organisms occupy particular habitats?; 8 - How do freshwater communities recover from disturbance; 9 - What is the impact of predators in freshwater systems?; 10 - What are the ecological effects of changing water regime?; 11 - How do we assess the impact of pollution?; 12 - Can we fix smelly, green lakes?; 13 - What is the impact of introduced species?

Review:

This text is designed around a number of premises: that the demand for ecologists will continue to rise; that ecologists need both general and specific knowledge and that freshwater will become one of the most critical systems in the coming years. Given these ideas, the authors have structured a book aimed at helping the beginner learn more about ecological science in general and freshwater ecology in particular.

To back up these premises, the text is divided into three parts. The first part comprises five chapters under the heading of 'tools in freshwater ecological science'. The idea is to introduce the beginner to some of the fundamentals of science. Thus chapter one starts with an overview of the nature of ecological science starting with the scientific method, continuing with the scope of ecology and concluding with an idea of where ecology might be headed in the near future. Chapter two tackles the problem of scale but in the context of sampling - a useful reminder that the pattern we see might be created by the quadrat we use! Chapter three acts as a brief introduction to water and the hydrologic cycle. The final two chapters in this section provide an introduction to lakes and rivers and streams respectively. For lakes, stratification and its implications are crucial; for rivers and streams, water flow is the key to understanding ecological patterns. Part two looks at some key ecological questions. Rather than describe various ecological ideas in a series of chapters, the authors have, instead, grouped ecological ideas around what they see as the four fundamental questions. The first (chapter 6) looks at demography - the distribution and abundance of the aquatic organisms and the factors which cause variations. Chapter seven examines habitats and the species that are found in them (and why, including models aimed at explaining this). Chapter 8 studies the problems caused by disturbance. Generally this means periodic flooding but it also includes streams in arid areas. Chapter 9 considers the role of predators in aquatic ecology. Although predators are obviously part of the natural system there is extensive use of a case study where introduced predators changed the river ecology. Part three, subtitled ' applied freshwater ecology', looks at four current issues and their ecological dimensions. Chapter 10 looks at large scale changes of water regime using the Aral Sea as a case study. Water pollution has a long history of study (chapter 11). Here, the authors take two cases - the Thames in London and the North American Great Lakes as examples where pollution has had a considerable impact (although this situation is improving). Chapter 12 takes a case common in many areas - the impact of eutrophication and how biomanipulation might (or might not) work. Finally, we get to read about the large number of introduced species that have created considerable impact on aquatic ecosystems e.g. zebra mussel.

This is a useful text. It's main strength is its breadth of coverage. At a time when study is becoming increasingly specialised it is important to see the big picture: to see how science in general and ecology in particular can be used (and misused) to address problems. In a text this slender it does mean that one loses depth but since there are plenty of references, readers can follow up cases. There is concern that, in places, some key ideas are given too little space and that some of the cases do not have the full range of ideas but it should be remembered that this text is for beginners. Cases are global but tend towards the southern hemisphere. The ideas in part one can be added to the concepts in part two to assist understanding of cases in part three. If students can work along these lines to develop a comprehensive line of thinking then this text will have been a valuable addition to the literature.