Preface

Summary

This volume on inland flood hazards is designed to provide both a general reference on flood hazards inland from coastal regions and, within each chapter, a comprehensive review of existing knowledge through specific case studies. The volume addresses floods and how the presence or absence of floods may constitute a hazard to human as well as nonhuman communities along the river corridor. The authors of the various chapters are geologists, civil engineers, geographers, meteorologists, and biologists. In asking each of them to write about some aspect of inland flood hazards, my intent has been to encourage an interdisciplinary dialogue of the hazards associated with changing flood regimes in river basins around the world. Three drainage regions – the Colorado River basin of the United States and Mexico, the Tone River basin of Japan, and the lower drainages of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers in Bangladesh – are used throughout this volume to exemplify the various aspects of inland flood hazards. As increasing human population density results in more manipulation of natural processes, and more pressure on river systems, it is imperative that we understand how hazards arise from natural and regulated flows along rivers. The steadily growing economic damage and loss of human life associated with floods, on the one hand, and the reduction in biological diversity and increase in number of endangered species, on the other hand, are the best justifications for studying inland flood hazards.