196 BOOK REVIEWS

CHANGING SEA-LEVEL ALONG THE NORTH COAST OF KUWAIT BAY, by Taiba A. Al-Asgour, Routledge, Kegan and Paul, 1982. Price: s25.00. ISBN 0 7103 0010 7.

This book has many of the characteristics of a doctoral thesis; it is a detailed study o f a local area with a review of background material on both the region and on sea level change, with a typical surfeit of data on grain sizes and sedimentological characteristics of sediments. It even has the obligatory SEM photographs. As such one cannot claim that it makes for light reading, but it does provide a thorough and competent survey of an important geomor- phological process.

The area investigated is the low-lying north coast of Kuwait Bay in northern Kuwait. Three methods were

used: the survey (including levelling, of morphological features), the radiocarbon dating of shells, and the analysis of sediments. All of these methods are described in detail. A staircase of six terraces was identified between around 90m and present sea-level, and evidence was found for structural instability during and after the period of terrace formation. Radiocarbon dates-on the lowest terraces fall into two groups: 42950 BP-23300 BP, and 4570-3250 BP. It is useful to have these results placed on record, albeit at some expense, for the coastline of Kuwait is rapidly being destroyed by man-rendering scientific research both more urgent and more fragmentary.

ANDREW GOUDlE School of Geography University of Oxford

WATERSHED REHABILITATION IN REDWOOD NATlONAL PARK AND OTHER PAClFlC COASTAL AREAS. R. W. Coats (Ed.). Centre for Natural Resource Studies of JMI, Inc. and National Park Service.

The Redwood National Park was expanded in 1978 and since that time the service has been attempting to rehabilitate the steep and erosion prone areas of Redwood Creek in Humboldt County, California. This area has been subject to disturbance and felling, and this book is a collection of papers presented at a symposium held in August 1981 at which recent work from the park’s rehabilitation programme was presented along with papers from related research areas. The papers are in five sections which the editor claims follows thought and watershed processes. The first section considers processes of watershed rehabilitation, the second techniques for revegetating erosion areas, the third hillslope processes,

CLIMATlC GEOMORPHOLOGY. Julius Biidel (Trans- lated by Lenore Fischer and Detlef Busche). Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1982. No. of pages: 443. Price: k35.30 (cloth); k13.10 (paperback). ISBN 0 691 08294 4 (cloth); ISBN 0 691 08295 2 (paperback).

Biidel argues that climatic influences are the best basis on which to develop a system of geomorphology. His book does indeed provide a new unified theory for the study of landform development. It provides the distil- lation of fifty years of vigorous personal field research ranging from Spitzbergen and Siberia to Ethiopia and India and the intellectual links between the geomor- phology of Walther Penck and that of Tricart, Carson and Kirkby. The book begins with a consideration of geomorphology’s place in the natural sciences, pointing out that geomorphology, the study of the genesis and history of landforms, differs from the other natural

the fourth stream channel processes and fisheries restor- ation and the fifth economic and management issues. However, examination of the contents of each part suggests that the variation within sections is greater than that between sections and there is a great deal of organization still necessary. The papers are direct, well organized and of a sensible length, about 12 pages each. The content is at a very ‘nuts and bolts’ level on the whole but in fairness there is no pretence that it attempts anything else. This volume may well be useful at land management or forest management schools. It is not ever likely to be a priority holding at University libraries. Those interested in puzzles however may wish to obtain a copy to try to determine the meaning or status of JMI, Inc., I could find no clue in the three hundred and sixty pages.

ADRIAN MCDONALD University of Leeds

sciences in terms of its genetic character, its complexity and resulting need for the diverse influences on landforms to be considered in careful chronological fashion, and in that the total relief visible today is in all ways a completely unique product whose long, complicated evolution cannot be recreated in a laboratory or described in terms of simple formulae or graphs. This idiographic view of landforms is then justified by a long and careful consider- ation of landform development into two major climatic zones, the periglacial and seasonally-wet tropical areas. These zones are where Biidel finds the most effective relief-forming mechanisms: ‘The polar zone of excessive valley-cutting and the zone of excessive planation in the seasonal tropics are the two morphoclimatic zones where relief-forming mechanisms are most effective’. Budel argues strongly that beneath river valleys, bedrock in the upper part of the permafrost is subject to frost cracking with frost wedging occurring as the result of air penetrat- ing and depositing ‘needle ice’ as a sublimate, thus