604 BOOK REVIEWS

relative air humidity and snow cover was used an empirical correlation method’, or the more amusing inclusion from Selivanov, ‘Global climate changes and humidity variations over East Europe and Asia by historical data’. However, if one can overlook the hand-drawn graphs, the absence of chapter numbers and the ‘international’ English, then one has to ask why it is necessary to mix some excellent work with papers that would never see the light of day in the most desperate of journals. I would not be pleased if I were an author who had gone to some effort.

In summary, this book comprises 70 per cent review articles, 20 per cent solid research and 20 per cent (in keeping with the arithmetic of the foreword!) that are forgettable. My conclusion: buy a third of the book.

RICHARD WASHINGTON University of Oxford

DROUGHT FOLLOWS THE PLOW, M. H. Glantz (ed.), Cambridge University Press (Cambridge), 1994. No. of pages: xviii+ 197. Price: €25.00, US$39.95. ISBN 0-521- 44252-4 (hardback). €12.95, US$19.95. ISBN 0521 47721 2 (paperback).

The title of this book is a play on words. There was a belief in the nineteenth century that in the USA ‘rain follows the plow’. The title, Drought Follows the Plow is the current message and is documented through nine case studies. The basic theme is that the increasing demands for food by our growing populations have led us to use more marginal and fragile lands in our need for food production.

The case studies covered here document how the use of these marginal lands leads to degradation of the land, which makes them even more marginal. The studies then make the point that this may cause various populations to become more vulnerable to natural climate fluctuations. This, in the hture, may lead to anthropogenic climate change.

ROBERT E. DICKINSON, UNIVERSITY OFARIZONA

ENVIRONMENTAL PHYSICS, Egbert Boeker and Rienk van Grondelle, John Wiley & Sons (Chichester), 1994. No. of pages: viii+448. Price: €19.95. ISBN 0-471-951 10-2 (paperback).

This textbook combines different branches of theoretical and applied physics to give an overview of the physical knowledge necessary to understand our environment. Environmental Physics handles special topics such as transport problems, climate or spectroscopy that usually are not covered by the basic textbooks of physics. For me it was interesting to read how to handle ground-water flow, control sound activity, and calculate the costs of a nuclear power plant, and I am sure that every reader will detect new facets of physics.

As other textbooks, Environmental Physics originated from physics lectures and courses. This shows up not only in the exercises added to each chapter, but unfortunately also in the selection of figures. A lot of them are taken from external sources and thus symbols and units used differ quite often from those used within the text and in equations. An extended list of symbols would be of great help for reading this book, and compiling this list would help the authors to eliminate some of the inconsistencies. These and other deficiencies in editing and typesetting give the impression of a draft version, but this might change in hture editions.

What I really missed in this book was a critical point of view and sometimes hints on how to avoid the traps hidden in physical models. For example: the Gaussian plume model is discussed intensively, but the important fact that this model considers a semi-infinite medium and-in contradiction to our real world-every pollution disappears into infinity, is not mentioned.

Environmental Physics is not refined enough to become a classic textbook, but it is a valuable source of information for students and academics. The reader will obtain an overview of the physical methods and concepts necessary to under- stand the processes in our environment.

H. MANNSTEIN Institut f i r Physik der Atmophare (Oberpfaflenhofen)