Review of Environmental Impacts for Water Resources Planning

Abstract

With increasing concerns for environmental issues and the need to develop and use water more sustainably, a proper assessment of the environmental impacts resulting from water resources development in a catchment or region is quite important. This assessment is often complex and challenging due to the multitude of issues that need to be considered and techniques that need to be used. The book, Environmental Impacts for Water Resources Planning by M. A. Yurdusev, to some extent, meets this challenge and introduces relevant theory and concepts. The book also includes a large-scale water resources planning model capable of forecasting the environmental impacts of water resources schemes. The book is based on research work carried out by the author at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K. with a strong focus on water resources planning issues and examples taken from England. The book contains seven chapters, a large reference list, six appendices, and a CD-ROM. Chapter 1 is brief but very well sets the context for the rest of the book. The sections on the purpose of the book and water resources planning are excellent. Chapter 2 provides an in-depth review of different techniques used for carrying out systems analysis to assist in the planning of water resources. The techniques that have been reviewed include the unit cost method, linear programming, mixed integer modeling, dynamic programming, heuristic programming, and genetic algorithms. The review provides a quick start for developing familiarity with these techniques for someone who is new in the area of water resources planning tools. Chapter 3 is about the description of multicriteria decisionmaking techniques and includes all essential details related to the techniques available for water resources planning. The techniques for valuation of the environmental impacts, in terms of monitory terms, due to water resources projects are discussed in Chapter 4.