Rivers are the arteries of the landscape, integrating the impacts of change in atmospheric and terrestrial systems and delivering these to the coast. En route, geomorphological processes create dynamic and diverse habitats, both in-stream and in riparian and floodplain environments (Petts and Amoros, 1996a). The dynamics of channel change have led to conflict with human resource development with the outcome that many river and riparian environments have been significantly modified and damaged (Brookes and Shields, 1996; Sear et al., 2000). Responses to change in driving variables (runoff regime and sediment loads) have become dampened or prevented through river maintenance (Sear et al., 1995), while in other circumstances, land-use and land management changes, coupled to more efficient drainage networks, may have increased system sensitivity to environmental change (Newson and Leeks, 1987; Robinson, 1990). <...>

This book is not a revised version of “The geology of fluvial deposits” (Miall 1996), but an entirely different product.
Much of the material in the 1996 book was compiled at a time when the methods of facies analysis and architectural element analysis were maturing and were becoming widely used by the sedimentological community. The lithofacies classification which I first proposed in 1977, and the method of architectural-element analysis, set out in major papers published in 1985 and 1988, were thoroughly documented in the 1996 book (Chaps. 5–7), and little has been done since then to require revisions or an upgrade.

Книга посвящена эволюции речной сети Западной Сибири в мезозое и кайнозое. Реконструкции выполнены на основе морфоструктурного анализа, анализа вещественного состава рыхлых отложений и морфологической выраженности древних долин. Выделены четыре этапа формирования магистральных рек. Начало формирования современной гидросети средний-верхний олигоцен. Современная гидросеть является гетерогенной. Завершение формирования её - верхнечетвертичное время.
Для палеогеографов, геоморфологов, геологов и просто любознательных читателей.