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Book Review |
F. G. Bell. Blackwell, Oxford, 1998. £29.50 softback; x+594pp. ISBN 0-86542-875-1.
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This is a text that continues the tradition of high-quality books that we have come to expect from Professor Fred Bell. He considers environmental geology from both the point of view of geology's impact on society and society's impact on geology. Thus, after an introduction that describes how maps may be used to portray the environment, the first half of the book looks at geohazards (volcanic, seismic and landslides) and geological environments (fluvial, marine, arid and glacial). Each chapter first describes clearly and concisely the features and processes that characterize that environment before examining how we interact with them and our attempts to control them. The latter part of the book considers more closely our use of the environment, including natural resources (water, soil, rock, mining and minerals), waste disposal, problem soils and the control of rock masses. An important section on environmental geology and health considers how naturally occurring trace elements can cause diseases in plants and animals both by their presence and their absence. This is a field that must be understood if one is to appreciate the complexity of the issues relating to contaminated land covered in the previous chapter. The book concludes with a chapter on land evaluation and assessment which encompasses remote sensing, site investigation methods and land capability studies.
The book is well-structured, laid out in double column format and
well-written in a flowing style. This makes it easy to find a topic of
interest and, having found it, one can rapidly gain an
