Further , I think a book with this title ought to give a few detailed "success stories" of rivers that have been restored to a more natural state. There must be better books out there on this subject.

As an FYI, my interests are woodlot and habitat restoration, and sustainable agriculture, so this review was not written by an ATV owning, cattle rancher who doesn't give a damn about our environment.

15 of 18 found the following review helpful:


Excellent overview of watershed ecology  Nov 18, 1998
This book is written in an informative and entertaining style which pulls you to finish the book. There is a lot of good information on how watersheds work with pleanty of real world examples, mostly from the Pacific Northwest. What looks "normal" to us now is not the natural state of rivers. The book has a Northwest focus but should be useful in any area. If you want to understand more about how rivers interact with their surroundings and how man has changed that over the last 100 to 200 years, this is a good book to read.

10 of 13 found the following review helpful:


Informative and enjoyable  Nov 10, 1998
If you are intersted in learning more about rivers and watersheds, this is a good place to start. Without being too technical, Valerie Rapp conveys a lot of information on how watersheds work. I bought this book as a gift for my husband, but couldn't put it down when I started to look though it before wrapping it up.


What a river should really look like  Apr 05, 2006 By gthorgaard
This book has a Pacific Northwest focus and is the result of a lot of research by the author into river ecology. Salmon are discussed throughout as an indicator of river health. I was struck by the descriptions of what the regional rivers looked like prior to development and why they were much more productive historically. The author has a nice writing style and I wanted to keep reading once I started. She often uses descriptive analogies to help us picture a situation (e.g., road construction is like a "loaded gun" in a watershed, waiting for a flood to trigger a disaster). I have been interested in this topic for a long time but feel that I now have a better picture of the problem. The solutions are not easy which is why there are not yet many success stories to point to, but the author does point out a path to restoration and some who are going down it.