This exciting new series tells children the story of energy today ... into tomorrow. Piece by piece the energy picture is fitted together - What is energy? Where is it? How is it used? Why is it important? The first title Water deals with the natural resources, their extraction, refinement and conversion into useable energy.
This book is not for everyone, but for naturalists and people interested in environmental conservation, it provides a general understanding of the natural movements of water -- the water cycle, groundwater, and the behavior of water in rivers. It's not light reading, but can be understood by the non-scientific reader, and I found it very useful.
I love this book because its by Luna Leopold. Sometime I would like to read it again.
Luna Leopold (yes, that's Aldo's brother!) created the watershed assessment methods I was trained to use while I worked for the New York City Dept. of Environmental Protection. I was part of the Watershed Conservation Corps for the Shokan Watershed, which is the supply of water for the city of New York. Luna's methods were designed and used in the west, but those of us on the corps used them in upstate New York.
The films and textbooks I learned from pictured Luna doing the stream assessments: Measuring "bankfull", sketching the profile of each section of the stream, measuring the depths of the streams with the Topcon surveying equipment, and recording pebble and sediment sizes at each cross-section for stream channel roughness. I did that on the crew for the NYC watershed.
Because of what I learned from Luna Leopold, I can design a stream stability assessment and with some computer programming I can model stream morphology. The information from Luna's methods is helpful for purposes of determining erosion on streams. People need to know if they travel on roads that cross streams, if they live on elevations below a stream or river, or if they use land that might be effected by a change in any streams.
Water: A Primer is an introduction to the significant works of Luna Leopold, who is the foremost morphology engineer in the country and possibly the world. It tells about the effect of water on the earths' systems.