In 1980 an important international workshop on The Engineering Problems in the Management of Gravel-Bed Rivers was held at Gregynog in Wales attended by specially invited scientists and engineers. This book forms a record of that meeting and should provide an important landmark in our understanding of the behaviour of gravel bed rivers.
Hey, Bathurst, and Thorne organized the workshop and edited the volume, and are to be congratulated on a high quality production which forms a major contribution to fluvial geomorphology .
The thuty papers are organized into three sections: a short introductory section, followed by major sections on fluvial processes and on engineering and management. In the introductory section, short papers by Hey and by Niell and Hey present the basic model types in fluvial geomorphology and review the engineering research needs. In the second section, on fluvial processes, are sixteen papers with groups dealing with hydraulics, sediment transport, erosion and deposition, then meanders, mountain streams, and finally modelling. Within such a collection it is inevitable that the individual papers will vary in depth and style of treatment. It is difficult to single out particular papers as more important and any such selection would reflect the bias of the reader. However, to this reviewer the following: Bray on flow resistance, Klingeman and Emmett on transport processes, although some of the material was not new, Church and Jones, and Bluck on bar sedimentation, and Leopold on meanders, were the most stimulating. The remaining twelve papers, on engineering and management are grouped into sections dealing with regime equations, flow routing, stabilization, river regulation, land use changes, and ecological implications. Again this reviewer's biased selection of the most stimulating would include Bray on regime equations, Winkley on the lower Mississippi, Kellerhals on river regulation, Gregory and Madew on land use changes, Patrick er al. on accelerated fluvial change, Milhous on ecological implications, and of the several papers by Simons and Ruh-Ming Li, that on bank erosion.