Overview

This book is about the chemical nature of water, clean or dirty: the majestic main river, the rippling peaty stream or burn, the quiet meandering brook-rivers all over the place. There is an easy but false association in all our minds that clear water is clean. This is not so.

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9781916209671

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Reviews

In order to bring a detailed understanding of the nature and problems of stream and rivers to a wider audience, Sylvia Haslam, doyenne of ecological studies of river environments and their vegetation, and author of a number of ground-breaking books on these topics, has teamed up with artist Tina Bone to produce a series of small A5 books that address individual topics or case studies. These concentrate on the vegetation of ditches, streams and rivers, as the essential indicators of their ecology and health. Despite their small format, these books are in no way designed for children, although a keen teenager with a hunger for natural history in the field could find much to learn from them. These books aim to produce a serious but accessible course in river management, not just for the keen naturalist, but also for the conservation volunteer, the farmer with watercourses on his land and even the professional land manager. The approach is very different from that of the popular, natural history books of Collins New Naturalist Series or Bloomsbury's British Wildlife Collection. The emphasis here is on inspiring and encouraging people to go out specifically to study streams and rivers, to learn to identify aquatic plants and recognise them as indicators of different environments, vegetational communities and water conditions, also to recognise changes and threats to their local rivers and the appearance of introduced or invasive species, or even detect protected freshwater plants. The authors were motivated by the apparent absence of 'easy-read' books focusing on the river itself and the vegetation belonging to it, and creating the habitat for all else. Each book has a superabundance of illustrations, some in colour, some in black and white. Their hallmarks are the artistic skill of Tina Bone, and the botanical expertise of Sylvia Haslam based on a lifelong career embracing many listed publications. Cam Valley Forum, Cambridge. I have also received, the two River friend books. I have taken time to pore over them. They contain down to earth, interesting observations and comments which the man in the street easily follows. The line drawings are fantastic. JB, Malta. This book was exceptionally edited. The pictures and illustrations were all wonderfully done. Each one has a caption and description. At first glance, there seemed to be a lot of them, but they were helpful and informative. Book Review Club. The books arrived today. I can see why T. was so impressed-they're informative, beautifully illustrated and utterly charming. I shall take them home and give them a thorough read through tonight. Thank you so much for sending them to me. I will make sure that my contacts across various organisations get to see them-they richly deserve to be distributed widely. RC, Environmental Monitoring Officer. What a lovely addition and they really are informative about rivers and river plants. They are really good books to accompany a walk by a river. Well done! I do hope they get picked up by the National Trust. CS-M, France. This series of books reminds me of a book I had as a young boy when I really liked fishing. It was called fishing with Mr Crabtree and it was beautifully illustrated and full of detail about Mr Crabtree and his favourite parts of the river and how we fished there, but again it was a book for the genuine enthusiast a real work of art. We really like the River Friend Series, and see them sitting well with enthusiasts of rivers of the outdoors and perhaps undergraduate level. CH, Cambridge. It was a lovely read. The paintings and drawings certainly stand out beautifully and support the text well. RH, Newmarket.

Author Information

Self-employed Desktop Publisher for many years until career-change to work as a Professional Artist and Book Publisher from March 2005. Tina is producing all the artwork for the River Friend Series, line art, colour artwork and photographs, co-authoring, and preparing each book for publication. Botanist and river culture, specialist, and the early historical, geological information in this series of books is taken from her previous publications, the most important of which are listed on the River Friend Website

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