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Book review |
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This lucid, comprehensive and beautifully-written book updates, expands and replaces a forerunner volume published in 1988 by the third author, the late lamented Dr Lewis Clark. Many UK hydrogeologists will be familiar with Clark's ‘Field Guide to Water Wells and Boreholes’, which was a professional handbook published in paperback by the Geological Society. This new volume covers essentially the same subject matter, but in far greater detail. Accordingly it is also a substantially longer book than its predecessor. So far, it seems, this new book has only been issued in hardcover, which means that the recommended retail price is going to be too hefty for many individuals' pockets. It is to be hoped that Wiley will soon issue a paperback edition, because this really is a book which should be on the desk of every practising hydrogeologist.
Strong points of this book include the clarity of the presentation, the breadth of the topics it covers, and the range of field environments from which it draws its examples. With regard to the latter, exemplars are drawn from crystalline bedrock as well as unconsolidated sand-and-gravel aquifers, from karst systems as well as the Chalk. It also spans the range of applications from state-of-the-art public supply wells in wealthy countries to inexpensive wells with hand pumps in the developing world. In this respect it far outshines most other volumes with which it might otherwise be compared, such as Driscoll's 1986 volume ‘Ground Water and Wells’, which is subject to the common shortcoming of
