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"Tracers in Hydrology"
Reviewed by H. J. Turin, Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 USA
This book, edited by N. E. Peters, E. Hoehn, Ch. Leibundgut, N. Tase, and D. E. Walling, presents the proceedings of an international symposium held in Japan in July 1993, under the auspices of the International Association of Hydrologic Sciences. The book contains a collection of 43 independent papers, organized into broad fields ranging from Watershed Processes to Ground-Water/Surface-Water Interactions and Sediments.
The first paper in the collection, the keynote address at the conference, provides a clear and concise overview of the theory and application of isotopic tracer techniques in ground-water and surface-water investigations, and describes current and future research activities supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency. This paper would be a useful introduction or review of the basic concepts of isotope hydrology for a student or newcomer to the field. Although the authors mention some of the newer and more innovative techniques, including sup 36 Cl and sup 3 H/ sup 3 He analysis, most of the discussion is focused on the well-established "workhorses" of isotope hydrology: sup 18 O,
` Most of the rest of the papers in this collection present case` studies of tracer hydrology. The success and impact of the book` come from the extreme breadth with which the two words` tracer and hydrology are defined. While the keynote address is` quite narrowly focused on methods based on a few stable and` radioactive isotopes,...