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Book review |
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Landslides in the Thick Loess Terrain of North-West China. E. Derbyshire, X. Meng & T. A. Dijkstra (eds). John Wiley & Sons, 2000. £130.00 hardback; xvi+xi colour plate section +288pp. ISBN 0-471-97349-1.
At first glance this book may seem yet another volume in the loess story of China. However, this perception would be wrong, as this book has successfully brought together knowledge from a wide variety of disciplines. There are in all 17 contributors although the editors contribute significantly throughout the book. What is especially pleasing in for probably the first time the wealth of knowledge from within China has been bought to the full attention of the world's scientific and engineering community. There is something for everyone from the serious loess researcher to practitioners who work with loess and to some extent other working with similar soil deposits such as tropical soils. Overall, this book is clearly and orderly presented and illustrated throughout with a mixture of maps, photos, diagram and scanning electron microscope pictures.
The reader is plunged into a wealth of
geological and geomorphological maps. Such maps have rarely been seen
before outside China and once again for that congratulations are in
order. Following this an excellent introduction to the scale and
enormity of the natural hazards faced in this region of China is
provided. Most notable being the Haiyuan landslides in 1920 where some
230 000 people were killed, arguably the greatest natural
disaster of the 20th century. The Gansu region has experienced over
40 000
