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

1 - Water and Life; 2 - Challenge and opportunity; 3 - Unfolding recognition of ecosystem change; 4 - Natural waters; 5 - Plant-soil-water-ecosystem relationships; 6 - Groundwater; 7 - Lakes and wetlands; 8 - River channels and floodplains; 9 - Impounded rivers and reservoirs; 10 - Domestic and industrial water management; 11 - Decision processes; 12 - Integrative processes.

Review:

By pure coincidence, at the time this review is being written in one country there are water usage restrictions; whilst the majority of readers come from a country currently suffering floods! It highlights the problems of distribution and usage; problems that are said to be likely to increase in the coming decades with increasing demand and supplies influenced by global warming. Given that this is a topical issue, what's needed is a comprehensive overview.

This text, subtitled 'water management and environmental policy' is an investigation into water usage. The opening chapter examines the importance of water to people and ecosystems. Such a perspective is central to the book's ideas: water is vital to all life - the issue is how to allocate it. Also in the opening chapter the reader is given a brief overview of water management history (longer than you may think) and some idea of water conflicts. Chapter two takes the theme of water management further by providing a global overview of water management. Chapter three continues the theme of water management but more in the form of a history of developing human understanding. In so doing another of the themes is revealed - the need for integrative (i.e. holistic) water management. Chapter four turns to look at natural systems in terms of the global hydrological cycle. This environmental focus is continued in the next few chapters. Chapter five examines the dynamics of water (flow, storage, change etc.) in the ecosystem. Although the reader starts with the natural system there's a coda looking at the changing role of human intervention on this system. The next chapter carries out a similar analysis in looking at groundwater. Lakes and wetlands are significant bodies of water and major providers of ecosystems services respectively. This chapter starts with descriptions of key lakes e.g. Superior, Baikal, Nyasa, Eyre etc. and continues with a description of lake management. From lakes the reader is moved on to rivers and floodplains where descriptions of floodplain ecosystems are linked with human intervention (with particular attention to more naturalistic management systems). The pattern of natural systems and human impact is turned around in chapter 9 when we see the human need for water storage followed by the environmental effects of same. Such systems are not totally bereft of environmental advantage but there are limitations which a useful critique of schemes helped to illuminate. There is a complete change of scale and focus in the next chapter. It looks at domestic and industrial use and the problems and prospects which arise. The final two chapters look at management issues in terms of decision-making and integrative management. In a sense, we've been led along this path all along with the information on natural systems and the issues of human management making a holistic approach seem the only logical conclusion. To support these ideas (in addition to numerous photographs and cases in the chapters) two appendices provide a huge range of Internet sites and references respectively.

This is an excellent text although it does not look the most obvious case at the start. It contains a wealth of information on natural systems often broken down in lists, tables, bullet points etc. making navigation through the ideas very easy. Likewise, human impact is well documented. Cases from around the world make a local study easy to find. In times when this topic is increasing in interest and there's a need for a good single-volume overview, this book deserves the widest readership.