Book Review: “Hydraulic Conductivity—Issues, Determination and Applications”, L. Elango (ed.), InTech, Croatia

Abstract

Hydraulic conductivity is probably the most important hydrogeological parameter, as it governs, along with other parameters, the flow of fluids and migration of contaminants beneath the ground surface, especially in soils and aquifers. There are already many books on broad aspects of hydrogeology and groundwater hydraulics that briefly review the determination of hydraulic conductivity. However, over the past several decades, due to the rapid development of science and technology and the ever-increasing groundwater extraction and contamination, many new theories, methodologies and applications regarding hydraulic conductivity have emerged. As a result, a book is needed to provide a useful collection of the current state of knowledge on the topic. Hydraulic Conductivity—Issues, Determination and Applications, edited by L. Elango (ISBN 978-953-307-288-3, 446p.) was recently published by InTech, an open access publisher based in Croatia (Elango 2011). Just 7 months before the publication of this book, another book entitled “Developments in Hydraulic Conductivity Research”, edited by Oagile Dikinya (2011), was published by the same publisher. Both these books report the latest advances of research within the hydraulic conductivity field of study and are worth reading, but the book by Elango (2011) is more extensive in content and has a more applied focus than the former one. It was published as open access, which enables everyone interested in this topic to read it free of charge, benefitting readers, authors, as well as science in general. Contributing authors come from around the world including Turkey, India, Brazil, Nigeria, Poland, Spain, USA, Iran, Germany, Canada, Mexico, Taiwan, Italy, France, Bolivia, Thailand and Australia. This book is organized into five clustered themes, and comprises a total of 21 chapters. A reference list is appended at the end of each chapter, which includes several recent references that allow readers to gain further information on specific topics. However, a shortcoming is the lack of an abstract for each chapter, thus readers are unable to get a quick glance at the main findings of each chapter. Environ. Process. (2014) 1:613–616 DOI 10.1007/s40710-014-0033-7