This is a wide-ranging text on soil pollution. The work starts with an introduction to soils, including chapters on the origins of soils, soil constituents, properties, classification, and—importantly and unusually—soil degradation.
This is followed by a discussion of the main types of pollutant that may occur in soils, the interaction of pollutants with soil, and their possible transformation to other species, including a useful discussion on enzymes and enzymatic degradation mechanisms—topics that are seldom found in engineering-focused texts on soil pollution. There is then a full discussion of the chemistry of some chemical warfare agents and complex and potentially recalcitrant species such as herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. This sets the book apart from many other texts, which tend to focus on heavy metal, hydrocarbon and chlorinated solvent pollution.
This is followed by a discussion of site characterisation, monitoring and flow modelling. Finally there is a brief overview of remedial technologies.
Overall, it is an interesting text, which presents the problems of soil pollution from a novel angle—at least to the UK reader. However, the quality of the text is reduced by poor proofreading and substitution of the wrong word here and there. These are minor errors, which could be tolerated, but the reader then finds problems that are more significant: a number of works referenced in the text are not included in the list of references, and occasionally dates do not match between text and bibliography. At this stage, your reviewer began to have serious concerns and to check chemical formulae and chemical equations. Sadly, a number of the chemical equations that are presented in the book do not balance. The chemistry may be broadly correct, but the stoichiometry certainly is not. The problem is particularly severe for some of the redox reactions, where there seems to have been no attempt to consider the charge balance. This lack of proofreading devalues the book, and it is unfortunate that it has reached publication in this state.
To begin at the beginning: the title implies that this volume covers all aspects of slope stabilisation. This is true, but only to a point. As the editors say in the introduction, the book ‘is an engineering guide for the design of slopes and stabilisation works on rocks and residual soils in tropical regions subject to heavy rainfall’ (my italics). So, although a prospective reader hoping for information on the stabilisation of clay soil landslides will find information of interest, it may not be as broad as the title suggests. The addition of the phrase ‘rocks and residual soils in tropical regions’ to the title would have been informative.
What is covered? There are 16 chapters, including the introduction, each tackling a different aspect of slope stabilisation works. They reflect South American and, to a lesser extent, Hong Kong practice, and as such are a most useful review. Between them the two editors have written or have been involved in writing many of the chapters, though there are a number of other authors. Each chapter reads more or less independently of the others, with the references following at the end of each chapter. After the introduction, the remaining 15 chapters cover geological factors in slope stability, landslide classification and risk management, site investigation, soil slope stability, rock slope stability, selection of stabilisation design, drainage and surface protection, retaining walls, reinforced walls and slopes, anchored and bolted slopes, tieback walls, soil nailing, stabilisation of rock slopes, the use of shotcrete, and instrumentation.
A broad, basic knowledge of soil and rock mechanics is assumed. The chapter on geology is very basic, concentrating on ‘rocks’ rather than ‘soils’. Landslide classification follows traditional lines (e.g. Cruden & Varnes, 1996), but is interspersed with case studies from the authors' files together with an extended section on debris flows. Site investigation methods are restricted to those appropriate to residual soils and rocks, with only passing mention of methods for other soil and rock types. The chapter on soil slope stability refers to a number of methods of limit equilibrium analysis, but does not provide a detailed understanding; a number of charts from Hoek & Bray (1981) are presented. There is little guidance on the choice of appropriate strength parameters. The chapter on rock slope stability largely follows Hoek & Bray (1981). Selection of stabilisation design is a useful section, illustrating the procedures followed in selecting appropriate methods. The long section on drainage includes the hydraulic design of surface water discharge schemes, which is of course important with tropical rainfall. A number of subsurface drainage techniques are described, though with little guidance as to their likely effectiveness. To be fair, this reflects the shortage of good case studies providing this information. The discussion of slope surface protection is useful. The chapter on retaining walls follows classical lines, and there is a summary of walls and design methods. There are also useful discussions of anchors in all their forms, and on the design of tied-back walls and soil-nail walls.
In summary, this book provides a helpful review of slope stabilisation techniques, and geotechnical engineers working with rocks and residual soils in tropical regions will find it useful. However, those working with other soil and rock types, in different climatic and geological environments, will learn from it, but will find less that is of direct value to them.
The authors have written this book for a readership of civil engineers with the intention of explaining the processes of karst and the consequential damage at the ground surface and to foundations resulting from this form of erosion. The ‘unexpected hole in the ground’ is a feature that most geotechnical engineers will encounter at some stage in their careers. This book hopes to remove the ‘unexpected’. In this respect the example of a viaduct collapse, given as a postscript to the preface, is probably one of the best examples of inadequate ground investigation in the whole book. A 14 MN column failed, but the boreholes had penetrated to only 3 m below the base of the caisson into the founding limestone stratum!
The authors concentrate mostly on sinkholes that have formed as a result of weaker soils collapsing into dissolutional voids, and draw attention to the fact that the vast number of these are a direct consequence of human action, be it groundwater lowering or the introduction of excess water at the surface, as for example from soakaways. The rocks in which the voids occur range from evaporites, such as halite and gypsum, to the limestones. These all have markedly different solubilities, but this is not emphasised in the text. Also, climatic effects are not mentioned, and although there is a map presented that indicates that much of Saudi Arabia is affected, the problem there is dissolution of the evaporites, and this causes collapse of limestone strata above. Limestone dissolution itself is not usually a problem.
The book is well illustrated, with a quarter of all figures being photographs from the authors' own collection. These show sinkhole features that range from the minor to ones that affect a whole mountainside. Explanatory sections accompany many of these photographs, and these show the positions of exploratory boreholes. They do not indicate how the development of the geological model has been refined with successive investigations. To do so would have emphasised the caution that needs to be exercised in interpreting the ground investigation data for any particular site. A lot of the cross-sections omit the position of the water table, which is unfortunate given the importance of groundwater in the sinkhole process.
There is a vast literature on the development of sinkholes, and this book provides a very useful synoposis. One of the premier literature sources is the Florida sinkhole conferences that report the situation in largely suburban and rural environments, where prior extensive ground investigation would have been prohibitively expensive. The authors make little mention of problems of karst in densely developed areas such as Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong, which are are familiar to many British engineering practices, and which benefit from more detailed investigations. The final chapter of the book presents 15 very useful case studies, which alone should convince engineers to take karst problems seriously.
This is a book that should find a place on the bookshelves of all geotechnical practices, either to act as a warning or as a reference should karst problems be encountered.
