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USDA-ARS George E. Brown, Jr. Salinity Laboratory 450 West Big Springs Road Riverside, CA 92507-4617
dcorwin{at}ussl.ars.usda.gov
Chunmiao Zheng and Gordon D. Bennett, John Wiley & Sons, 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. 2002. 656 p. $94.95 hardcover. ISBN 0-471-38477-1.
Hydrogeologists and ground water scientists concerned with modeling contaminant transport in ground water resources are faced with a challenge that is complex and multidisciplinary in nature. Because of the volume of data, the spatial heterogeneity of the earth's subsurface, and the complexity of contaminant transport processes, a multidisciplinary approach is required to model the fate, distribution, and movement of contaminants in the subsurface. The knowledge and information required to address the problem of modeling contaminant transport in ground water cross several traditional areas of science including geology, hydraulics, geochemistry, geophysics, and biology and more recently have extended into several more obscure, though burgeoning, subdisciplines including geographic information systems (GIS), geostatistics and spatial statistics, fractals, fuzzy logic, and hierarchical organization theory for issues of scale.
A comprehensive integration of the concepts and contributions in the area of contaminant fate and transport at the surface, near surface, and subsurface within a single text has not yet occurred nor is it likely to occur anytime soon given the breadth of scientific development and the formidable existing knowledge base. Nevertheless, the book by Zheng and Bennett provides a significant contribution to modeling of contaminants in the subsurface. Zheng and Bennett present a classical mathematically rigorous coverage of the basic principles of solute transport simulation including within its book covers (i) the physical (e.g., advective–dispersive transport), chemical (e.g., sorption, kinetics), and biological (e.g., degradation) processes controlling the transport and fate of solutes in the subsurface and the equations governing theses processes; (ii) the modeling process (i.e., problem formulation, model development, parameter selection, calibration, sensitivity analysis); (iii) the most common numerical analysis techniques for solving transport equations; (iv) sources, evaluation (e.g., Monte Carlo method, first-order error analysis), and management of uncertainty associated with transport simulation; and (v) case studies to provide a demonstration of the use of transport simulation in solving field application problems. In addition, the second edition provides an expanded coverage of aquifer heterogeneity, a new section on the dual-domain mass transfer approach as an alternative to the classical advective–dispersion model, a discussion of the total-variation-diminishing approach to transport solution, simulation of density-dependent flow and transport, unsaturated flow and transport in the vadose zone, and the simulation-optimization approach for the management of ground water quality.
Unquestionably, the strengths of this book far outweigh the weaknesses, which are few in light of the authors' stated goal of "bringing together, in a single volume, both theoretical and practical aspects of contaminant transport modeling." In fact, citing the few weaknesses may be splitting hairs and draws attention to subtle facets of the subject matter that do not necessarily fit into the authors' stated focus. Zheng and Bennett achieve their primary objective with a book that serves as a self-study guide and reference for hydrogeologists and contaminant transport specialists. The book is well-written, lucid, well-structured, informative, thorough, and above all provides a good balance between theoretical rigor and practical model application. Given the stated objective of the authors for writing their book and the obvious desire of the authors to adhere to a classical mathematically rigorous approach to modeling contaminant transport in ground water, the absent or inconsequential coverage of the application of GIS, fractals, fuzzy logic, and other tools, which have been recently used with success to model nonpoint-source contaminants in the vadose zone, is insignificant. However, many soil physicists and modelers of the vadose zone will be disappointed by the minimal treatment of solute transport modeling in the vadose zone. In the authors' defense, their coverage of the vadose zone is as good or better than other hydrogeology books. Even so, an expansion of the chapter on flow and transport in the vadose zone could provide the authors with a means of drawing attention to more nontraditional approaches for dealing with the issues of scale (e.g., hierarchical organization theory) and spatial variability (e.g., GIS, fuzzy logic, fractals) without compromising the rigorous mathematical focus of the book. This is intended as a constructive criticism.
In short, Applied Contaminant Transport Modeling is a must for a hydrogeologist's and transport specialist's bookshelf along with Freeze and Cherry's Groundwater, Fetter's Contaminant Hydrology (2nd edition), Pinder's Groundwater Modeling Using Geographical Information Systems, and Domenico and Schwartz's Physical and Chemical Hydrogeology. Though it may or may not be the premier reference for hydrogeologists as proclaimed by its publisher, it is certainly one of them.
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