BOOK REVIEW | River Discharge to the Coastal Ocean: A Global Synthesis

Abstract

Rivers provide the primary link between land and sea, historically discharging annually about 36000 km3 of freshwater and more than 20 billion tonnes of solid and dissolved sediments to the global ocean. Together with tides, winds, waves, currents, and geology, rivers play a major role in determining the estuarine and coastal environment. The movement of fresh water and the distribution of river-derived sediments to the ocean have fundamental impacts on a wide variety of coastal environments, ranging from the Mississippi and Nile deltas, to coastal siberia, to the Indonesian archipelago.Utilizing the world's largest database - 1534 rivers that drain more than 85% of the landmass discharging into the global ocean - this book presents a detailed analysis and synthesis of the processes affecting the fluvial discharge of water, sediment, and dissolved solids. The ways in which climatic variation, episodic events, and anthropogenic activities - past, present, and future - affect the quantity and quality of river discharge are discussed in the final two chapters. The book contains more than 165 figures-many in full color-including global and regional maps. An extensive appendix presents the 1534-river database as a series of 44 tables that provide quantitative data regarding the discharge of water, sediment, and dissolved solids. The appendix's 140 maps portray the morphologic, geologic, and climatic character of the watersheds. The complete database is also presented within a GIS-based package available online at www.cambridge.org/milliman.River Discharge to the Coastal Ocean: A Global synthesis provides an invaluable resource for researchers, professionals, and graduate students in hydrology, oceanography, geology, geomorphology, and environmental policy.