For twenty years, Lawrence Dingman's well-written, comprehensive Physical Hydrology has set standards for balancing theoretical depth and breadth of applications. Rich in substance and written to meet the needs of future researchers and experts in the field, Dingman treats hydrology as a distinct geoscience that is continually expanding to deal with large-scale changes in land use and climate. The third edition provides a solid conceptual basis of the subject and introduces the quantitative relations involved in answering scientific and management questions about water resources. The text is organized around three principal themes: the basic concepts underlying the science of hydrology; the exchange of water and energy between the atmosphere and the earth's surface; and the land phase of the hydrologic cycle. Dingman supplies the basic physical principles necessary for developing a sound, instructive sense of the way in which water moves on and through the land; in addition, he describes the assumptions behind each analytical approach and identifies the limitations of each.
Outstanding features include: An examination of documented trends in global change of climatic and hydrologic quantities; statistical and measurement methods for the development and management of hydrologic simulation modeling; additional exercises that emphasize analyses using data sets obtained via the Internet; and Excel spreadsheets on the accompanying CD.