Coastal Hydrology and Processes

From Proceedings of the 25th Anniversary Meeting & International Conference; Challenges in Coastal Hydrology and Water Quality. This book will be of interest to anyone studying: coastal hydrology and water resources, water resources planning; environmental science and engineering; development and management; agricultural and forest resources; earth sciences; watershed and range sciences; environmental resources planning & management. Coastal Hydrology and Processes contains 40 papers in eight sections reflecting on various aspects of coastal hydrology and processes. Section 1 deals with geographical information systems (GIS) and spatial analysis. The GIS has become a vital tool for distributed hydrologic modeling. Section 2 deals with land use and climate change impacts on coastal regions. There is a great deal of connection between climate change and land use change, and this connectivity is now being increasingly acknowledged. Section 3 deals with surface hydrologic modeling. Flood control and risk analysis are discussed in Section 4. This subject takes on an added significance in light of the damage that is caused by floods each year in coastal areas, and from the effects of Katrina and Rita on the gulf states in 2005. Section 5 deals with ground water modeling. Surface water and ground water interactions are discussed in Section 6. The populations of coastal areas are increasing their dependence on groundwater. The management of this valuable freshwater resource requires that its interaction with surface water is properly managed. These six sections constitute the building blocks for watershed modeling. Extending this discussion further, Section 7 deals with coastal processes and analysis. The concluding Section 8 deals with coastal watershed modeling, which is fundamental to quantifying the impacts of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.