Uplift resulting from the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811–12 created a waterfall in the Mississippi, reported as having a drop of 6 ft and extending from bank to bank. The uplift is still visible as a convexity in the surface water profile and the residue of the waterfall as a notable increase of gradient, which has migrated upstream from the original site due to subsequent erosion. As the authors point out, rivers are particularly sensitive features of the landscape, and will respond to tectonic movements in significant ways.
Stanley Schumm is an eminent fluvial geomorphologist of great experience, and he and his fellow authors have produced a book describing the relations between alluvial rivers and tectonics. Where tectonic movements have been recorded, fluvial features such as surface water profile, sinuosity, bank width/depth ratios, channel stability and variations in sediments may be ascribable to the tectonics. The observations may still only be conjectural, since many other factors, such as variations in hydrology, sediment supply, tributary changes, non-tectonic base-level changes and human interference, may all have a bearing upon the observed fluvial changes. Hence using the logic in the reverse direction—that is, trying to use the observed fluvial changes to explain how the tectonics are affecting the land surface—is fraught with difficulty owing to the large number of possible influences. The authors clearly admit this, but make a brave attempt to show how the sensitivity of rivers can be used when, due to the thickness of the superficial cover, the tectonic movements may not have any other surface expression.
Most of the rivers described in detail are from the USA, which is not surprising as these examples are heavily drawn from the work of Stanley Schumm's PhD students. Other rivers described include the Indus and Nile, and examples from South America and Eastern Europe. Readers will not find any mathematics here (ignoring two very simple equations used for purposes of definition); the work is purely descriptive. Even the results of laboratory experiments to investigate the effects of uplift and subsidence are given a descriptive treatment. This points to a weakness in that there is negligible cross-reference to hydraulics literature and hence no analysis of erosional and sedimentary processes. However, the value of the book lies in its description of observable features in alluvial river valleys and the broad perspective view that this confers beyond the constraints required by mathematical analyses based on unproven assumptions.
River engineers, hydrologists and others concerned with rivers and flooding will find it useful to read this book; not only if they are working in regions with active tectonics, but also (as the book also considers) in regions with man-induced subsidence. Seismologists looking for clues to the nature of the underlying tectonics will be shown how rivers and their valleys are a potential source of useful information. Geologists interpreting ancient fluvial deposits will value this book. An excellent feature is a very extensive set of references to relevant works in the geomorphological and geological literature. The writing style is very clear, although the general reader may become wearied by the abundance of detail concerning unknown rivers in far-away places.
This is a very well produced, full-colour paperback report from the COST (Co-operation in Science and Technology) Action C7 for Soil–Structure Interaction in Urban Civil Engineering working group D. The report aims to raise awareness of geotechnical and geo-environmental issues among urban planners across Europe and covers surface development, utilisation of underground space, geo-environmental aspects of urban development, and the use of geological and geotechnical information for urban planning. The report uses several short (one page) case studies to illustrate its themes.
Much of the information given in the report will be familiar to geotechnical engineers, and the report's usefulness will mainly be in persuading urban planners to pay more attention to geotechnical and geo-environmental matters.
‘This book offers an overview of the architectural and engineering works that represent major steps … in the creation of the built environment’ (from the Preface).
Of those feats that could be classified as geotechnical, the book includes Alpine railroad tunnels in Switzerland; Aswan High Dam in Egypt; Banaue rice terraces in the Philippines; Bay Area Rapid Transit in California, USA; Cahokia mounds in Illinois, USA; Cappadocia's underground cities in Turkey; the Central Artery/Tunnel in Boston, USA; the Channel Tunnel between England and France; Chek Lap Kok International Airport in Hong Kong; Deltaworks in the Netherlands; Erie Canal in New York State; Hezekiah's Tunnel in Israel; London Underground; Marib Dam in Yemen; Offa's Dike between England and Wales; Oresund Link between Denmark and Sweden; the Panama Canal; St Katherine Dock, London; the Suez Canal in Egypt; and the Thames Tunnel, London.
Although the hardback version of the book is well produced, I was disappointed that the illustrations and photographs are in black and white and relatively few and far between, especially since some (e.g. the Eiffel Tower, Empire State Building) would have been easy to obtain. There is also an electronic version of this book available from www.abc-clio.com.
This is the second edition of the popular student text by Simons and Menzies and one of a number of similarly-targeted books in Thomas Telford's ‘A short course in …’ series. The book's chapters cover effective stress and short-term and long-term stability; shear strength; immediate settlement; bearing capacity of footings; settlement analysis; and piled foundations.
The book's strengths are also in many ways its weaknesses. Admirably short for a book on foundation engineering, this does mean that many topics are discussed only superficially. Most of the material could have been given on a short-course twenty years ago — 85% of the references cited date from the 1970s or earlier — to the detriment of recent advances in foundation engineering.
In summary, this is a traditional introductory text for undergraduate engineers, but one that will leave practising engineers disappointed.
CIRIA has a tradition of producing highly valuable summaries of engineering knowledge and practice in a particular subject. This book follows in that tradition by providing a round-up of current thinking about the origin and nature of glacial tills together with guidance for performing engineering works in them.
The book discusses the geology of tills—the physical processes that formed them and their stratigraphy in the UK; their engineering classification and properties; and site investigation for tills. The remaining chapters of the book cover engineering works in glacial tills: earthworks, cuttings, embankments, shallow foundations, pile foundations, groundwater lowering, tunnelling, and landsliding.
The book is amply illustrated and packed with useful practical information.
This volume forms one part of a set of ‘short course’ titles for the geotechnical engineer and is aimed at students and practitioners alike. This volume is based around the presentation of ‘fundamental’ aspects of soil and rock mechanics theory as they relate to slope engineering and is presented in a concise, readily-digestable format.
‘A short course …’ sets itself the goal of enabling hand-checking of computer outputs for slope stability and there is a brief review of software, together with a ‘student edition’ of the widely-used SLOPE/W on CD.
The background theory provides a well-written review of ‘conventional’ soil and rock mechanics and the inclusion of summaries of several classic papers by authors, including Skempton and Hutchinson, provides a good illustration of many of the points. Whether the division between soil and rock slopes would be better treated in separate volumes is debatable and will depend on the reader's requirements. Personally, I would like to have seen a section on Critical State soil mechanics, which may have been easier to fit into a text devoted to soil slopes.
While the most obvious beneficiaries of a book like this will be students and less experienced practitioners, there is much to provide a useful reference even to those of us who believe we understand slopes.
This 250-page volume is the proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Applications of Computational Mechanics in Geotechnical Engineering, which was held in Porto, Portugal, in September 1998. Twenty-five papers are grouped into five sections: computational models (ten papers); underground structures (seven papers); back-analysis methodologies (four papers); ground reinforcement (two papers); and earth-retaining structures (two papers). The bulk of the papers concern applications in either earth dams or tunnelling. The submitted papers cover the following: mesh size effects in dam rockfill settlement; a constitutive model for swelling soils; arching effects in an earth dam; limit analysis of rock masses; wetting collapse of rockfill; neural network based stress–strain models; response of a shallow foundation on residual soil; stochastic approaches to the dynamic behaviour of earth dams; the influence of a rock foundation on the seismic response of dams; dynamic train/bridge/subgrade interactions; shotcrete tunnel stability; damage and failure around openings in brittle rock; earthquakes and rock caverns; subsidence above rock-salt cavities; hydromechanical behaviour of pressurised tunnels in discontinuous rock; numerical and centrifugal analysis of tunnel stability in soft soils; deformation around tunnels in clay; soil–lining interaction during tunnelling; mining subsidence; pressure distribution in dam galleries; hydraulic conductivity beneath concrete dams; geogrid slope settlement; geotextile reinforcement beneath embankments; collapse of flexible anchored walls; and excavation in soft organic soils.
