Water is our most vital resource, yet few understand even the basics of watershed ecology. This new edition has been updated to reflect growing environmental challenges, such as climate change, the insidious spread of invasive species and the loss of biodiversity. Watersheds: A Practical Handbook for Healthy Water is an engaging and informative introduction to ecology and environmental issues that focus on water-related issues. Well suited for youth or general readers of any age, Watersheds combines a profusion of beautiful illustrations with non-technical and accessible text, making it attractive as well as informative. The book explains ecological principles, environmental challenges, introduces North America's major biological regions, outlines the complexities of water and nutrient cycles and explains the ecology of wetlands and waterways. Watersheds also explains some of the major environmental issues facing North America, including air pollution, water pollution, invasive exotic species, and habitat loss and destruction. Watersheds provides detailed information on: water and nutrient cycles bioregions and aquatic habitats exotic species invasions water and air pollution ecological restoration habitat loss. While Watersheds identifies and explains multiple ecological challenges, the book is engaging, empowering, and positive, providing practical "How Can I Help?" sections aimed to inspire participation in efforts to restore watersheds and protect the environment. As the book explains, what's good for one's local watershed is also good for the planet -- so we can all help protect and restore our natural environment.

Let the Water Do the Work is an important contribution to riparian restoration. By "thinking like a creek," one can harness the regenerative power of floods to reshape stream banks and rebuild floodplains along gullied stream channels. Induced Meandering is an artful blend of the natural sciences - geomorphology, hydrology and ecology - which govern channel forming processes. Induced Meandering directly challenges the dominant paradigm of river and creek stabilization by promoting the intentional erosion of selected banks while fostering deposition of eroded materials on an evolving floodplain. The river self-heals as the growth of native riparian vegetation accelerates the meandering process. Not all stream channel types are appropriate for Induced Meandering, yet the Induced Meandering philosophy of "going with the flow" can inform all stream restoration projects. Induced meandering strives to understand rivers as timeless entities governed by immutable rules serving their watersheds, setting their own timetables, and coping with their own realities as they carry mountains grain by grain to the sea. Anyone with an interest in natural resource management in these uncertain times should read this book and put these ideas to work.

Get the most up-to-date and comprehensive guide to watershed analysis and management. In Watersheds: Processes, Assessment, and Management, author Paul DeBarry covers aspects of watershed physical processes such as assessing, classifying, and evaluating a watershed; using GIS models for watershed assessment; and effectively planning for future use and demands. He covers precipitation, ecology, geology, soils, geomorphology, hydrogeology, hydrology, water quality, hydraulics, GIS, data collection, planning, and management. And he takes you beyond theory so you learn to apply planning, management, GIS, and hydrologic engineering principles in real-world watershed management. This concise reference manual is ideal whether you're a scientist, biologist, geologist, engineer, planner, administrator, part of a citizens group, or a practitioner seeking to identify what is important in the watershed being studied.

In Embracing Watershed Politics, political scientists Edella Schlager and William Blomquist provide timely illustrations and thought-provoking explanations of why political considerations are essential, unavoidable, and in some ways even desirable elements of decision making about water and watersheds. With decades of combined study of water management in the United States, they focus on the many contending interests and communities found in America's watersheds, the fundamental dimensions of decision making, and the impacts of science, complexity, and uncertainty on watershed management.

This new edition is a major revision of the popular introductory reference on hydrology and watershed management principles, methods, and applications. The book's content and scope have been improved and condensed, with updated chapters on the management of forest, woodland, rangeland, agricultural urban, and mixed land use watersheds. Case studies and examples throughout the book show practical ways to use web sites and the Internet to acquire data, update methods and models, and apply the latest technologies to issues of land and water use and climate variability and change.