โ Scribed by Robert H. Shaw
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The authors have undertaken a very ambitious but much needed undertaking; the explanation of environmental measurement. They have assembled together for the first time widely scattered information on environmental measurement. In some respects they have achieved their goal, in other respects not. The reaction of the reader will depend upon his background and training. Botanists, ecologists and many biologists will find considerable useful information in this book. Meteorologists and engineers will probably find the book inadequate for their purpose. In the preface the authors state that chapters 3-9 will review extensively and critically the methods for measuring environmental variables. In relatively few cases has this review been critical, but more descriptive in nature, particularly in discussing operating characteristics of instruments. This will be a weakness as far as meteorologists and engineers are concerned. A quick count shows only nine references out of 161 references for these chapters are after 1960. This seems like a relatively small number of recent references.
Chapter 1 presents an introduction and discussion of concepts and principles of the environment with definitions and brief discussions about different components of the environment. Chapter 2 covers experimental designs. This is a very important concept for those involved in environmental measurement, but one chapter hardly scratches the surface. The reviewer personally feels it would have been better to leave this subject to one of the many excellent statistical books available and use this space for photographs and diagrams to better explain other parts of the book. The section on data presentation will be very useful.
Starting in chapter 3, different components of the environment are discussed in greater detail. Chapter 3 covers radiation and chapter 4, light intensity. The division between these chapters seems to be intensity versus duration. The reviewer feels they would have been better combined. Photographs of some of the more important instruments would have been extremely useful for those not well acquainted with these instruments. Without a photograph, many readers will still not know how these instruments appear and how they operate. The economical net radiometer (p.81) is not similar to the Gier and Dunkle as stated by the authors. The reference to the Monteith radiometer (p.81) is in error.
Temperature measurement is discussed in chapter 5. The discussion of thermometers, thermistors and thermocouples will be useful to the biologist. On p.121, mention is made of using a pyranometer to obtain radiation flux. W.M.O. describes this as an instrument for measuring solar radiation. Excellent radiation thermom-
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