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River Ice breakup.

Article Excerpt
RIVER ICE BREAKUP. Edited by SPYROS BELTAOS. Highlands Ranch, Colorado: Water Resources Publications, LLC, 2008. ISBN 978-1-887201-50-6. xvi + 462 p., colour & b&w illus., references, index. Hardbound. US$85.00.

This publication was sponsored by the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering and Canadian Committee on River Ice Processes and the Environment (Hydrology Section of the Canadian Geophysical Union). The intent of this book was to update an earlier (1995) publication and bring together a substantial body of knowledge that had been published in a wide assortment of conference proceedings, technical reports, scientific journal articles, and books and to identify key gaps in current knowledge.

The book attempts to bridge the gap between earlier, largely empirical, approaches to studying river ice breakup and more recent theoretical approaches, with emphasis on prediction. The theoretical approach uses quantitative application of the thermodynamics of heat transfer, hydrology, hydraulics, and ice mechanics. Beltaos acknowledges both the complexity of predicting these processes and the typical lack of detailed information on channel geometry, bathymetry, stream bed slope and tortuosity, hydraulics, and hydrology, which require a balance between using quantitative approaches and applying qualitative or empirical relations. Engineers and water resource managers will find many examples of how to apply quantitative approaches using approximations or empirical relations to estimate requisite variables where local data are lacking. In this sense, the book succeeds in its primary objective of providing a framework for obtaining and applying...

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