Review of Hydrology and Water Resources Systems Analysis by Maria A. Mimikou, Evangelos A. Baltas, and Vassilios A. Tsihrintzis

The contents of the book clearly show that this is primarily a surface water hydrology book, like most other hydrology textbooks, and contains little underwater resources systems analysis. Nevertheless, the book does reflect the vast experience of the authors.

The subject matter of the book is divided into nine chapters. Introducing the science of hydrology, Chapter 1 goes on to discuss the historical evolution of hydrology, classification of hydrology, hydrologic cycle, hydrologic variables and their measurement, river basin, scales in hydrology, worldwide distribution of water, and hydrological balance. The discussion is rather brief and is less than informative. For example, the historical evolution of hydrology does not really do justice to the history of hydrology. Likewise, the classification of hydrology misses other sciences of hydrology, such as vadose hydrology and snow and ice hydrology. The discussion on scales is less than complete. Solved examples given in the chapter are good. On the whole, the chapter is good but could be better.

Chapter 2 deals with precipitation and hydrological losses. The precipitation part encompasses formation of precipitation, vertical structure of the atmosphere, precipitation types, cooling mechanisms, measurement of precipitation by conventional and advanced techniques, installation of rain gauges, space measurements, homogeneity test, completion of rainfall measurements, integration of areal rainfall from point measurements, optimal interpolation, and time distribution of rainfall. This part is covered quite well.

The hydrological losses part of the chapter includes evaporation, evapotranspiration, and infiltration. Water balance, energy balance, mass transfer, and combination methods are described for computing evaporation. The discussion on evapotranspiration includes water balance methods, methods for determining potential evapotranspiration from climatic data, and methods for determining actual evapotranspiration. This portion includes essentially all important aspects. For computing infiltration, eight popular methods are covered, but computing actual infiltration is not described.

Runoff is discussed in Chapter 3, which covers limited aspects of river basin geomorphology; hydrographs, including hydrograph characteristics, separation, and factors affecting hydrograph shape; hydrometry, including measurement of water level and discharge estimation; rainfall-runoff relationships based on empirical methods, unit hydrograph methods, synthetic hydrographs, and Center for Ecology and Hydrology United Kingdom (CEH-UK) revitalized flood hydrograph, and the chapter is concluded with a case study using the Hydrologic Engineering Center Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC-HMS) hydrological model. The geomorphologic unit graph is missing in the chapter. Of course, physically based methods, such as kinematic wave method, are not touched on at all.

Chapter 4 deals with probability and statistics in hydrology. Beginning with a discussion of general concepts and definitions, it goes on to cover random variables, some important discrete and continuous distributions, statistical analysis of extremes, testing of distributions, and intensity duration frequency curves. The chapter does not cover some important distributions, such as generalized extreme value distribution, does not discuss regional frequency analysis, and does not deal with parameter estimation.

Groundwater hydrology is discussed in Chapter 5. It covers soil and aquifer properties, classification of aquifers, field measurements, analysis of groundwater flow in both confined and unconfined aquifers, well hydraulics, well losses, aquifer recharge, and salinization. On the whole, this is a good chapter and covers essential aspects of groundwater.

Chapter 6 deals with hydrologic design. It encompasses sizing of reservoirs with the use of conventional as well as unconventional methods. Conventional methods include cumulative inflow curve, active reservoir volume, Rippl’s conventional design, and sequent peak analysis method. Unconventional methods include stochastic methods and synthetic data of inflow and their cumulative curves. Then, the chapter covers design risk, advantages of unconventional sizing method, sensitivity of reservoir design to synthetic discharge generation, unconventional method of sizing incorporating persistence of inflows, sizing of a reservoir with a spillway, sizing of a reservoir without measurements, sizing of dead reservoir volume, estimation of active volume loss, design of flood safety protection structures, spillway hydrologic design, probable maximum flood, design of river diversion, and design of other water structures. This is a good chapter but is primarily restricted to reservoir design. Hydrologic design is much more.

Urban hydrology and stormwater management constitute the subject matter of Chapter 7. Introducing different aspects of stormwater management, history, urban stormwater drainage system, impacts of urbanization, factors affecting urban runoff quality, pollutant generation processes, types and sources of pollution, and impacts of receiving waters, the chapter discusses computation of urban runoff by the rational method and the Soil Conservation Service method computation of urban runoff quality by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency method, the U.S. Geological Survey method, and the District of Columbia method; pollutant accumulation on streets; wash off of accumulated pollutants; and surface runoff quantity and quality management that includes pollutant control at the source, pollution control in sewers and drainage ditches, pollution control with surface detention-retention and storage, runoff, and treatment. Overall, this is a good chapter covering essential aspects of urban stormwater management.

The last chapter, Chapter 8, is on sediment transport and erosion. It begins with a discussion of sediment properties, such as size and shape, density, specific weight, and specific gravity, and goes on to discuss fall velocity; channel flow resistance; resistance in alluvial streams and river; incipient motion; sediment transport that include formulas for computing bed load, suspended load, and total sediment load; land erosion, and watershed sediment yield by universal soil loss equation. This chapters covers essential basics.

On the whole, this is a good book and can be easily adopted as a textbook for an undergraduate hydrology course. For a graduate course, the book falls short of covering many advanced topics. Another point that is rather conspicuous in each chapter is that it does not cite some of the most important works. For example, the classical work of Dooge on the unit hydrograph theory is not cited. For each chapter many examples like this can be offered. These discrepancies aside, the book is a good balance between theory and practice and is a good addition to the hydrologic library. The authors deserve applause for writing this book and enriching the hydrologic literature with their long experiences.