Discussions of all aspects of rivers are found in Stanley A. Schumm, and David E. Sugden, Geomorphology (1984); Dale F. Ritter, Process Geomorphology, 2nd ed. (1986); and Marie Morisawa, Rivers: Form and Process (1985); Trevor Day and Richard Garratt, Lakes And Rivers (2006); and Malcolm Newson, Hydrology and the River Environment (2008).
Environmental problems attendant on river use are discussed in Cooling Water Discharges from Coal Fired Power Plants: Water Pollution Problems (1983), proceedings of an international conference; R.G. Toms, “River Pollution-Control Since 1974,” Water Pollution Control, 84(2):178–186 (1985); M. Chevreuil, A. Chesterikoff, and R. Letolle, “PCB Pollution Behavior in the River Seine,” Water Research, 21(4): 427–434 (April 1987); and James R Penn, Rivers of the World: A Social, Geographical, and Environmental Sourcebook (2001).
Discussions and additional references about valley morphology in natural and experimental settings can be found in M. Paul Mosley, and William E. Weaver, Experimental Fluvial Geomorphology (1987). Detailed discussions of terrace formation can be found in Dale F. Ritter, “Complex River Terrace Development in the Nenana Valley near Healy, Alaska,” 93(4):346–356 (April 1982). Important works treating processes and characteristics of alluvial fans in detail include R. Craig Kochel and Robert A. Johnson, “Geomorphology and Sedimentology of Humid-Temperate Alluvial Fans, Central Virginia,” in Emlyn H. Koster and Ron J. Steel (eds.), Sedimentology of Gravels and Conglomerates (1984), pp. 109–122; Neil A. Wells and John A. Dorr, Jr., “Shifting of the Kosi River, Northern India,” Geology, 15(3):204–207 (March 1987); Richard H. Kesel, “Alluvial Fan Systems in a Wet-Tropical Environment, Costa Rica,” National Geographic Resources, 1(4):450–469 (Autumn 1985); and Keith Richards, Rivers: Form and Process of Alluvial Channels (2004).
The characteristics and formative processes of estuaries are discussed in Maurice L. Schwartz (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Beaches and Coastal Environments (1982), with illustrated entries on estuaries and on estuarine coasts, deltas, habitats, and sedimentation; Russell Sackett, Edge of the Sea, rev. ed. (1985); Eric C.F. Bird, Coasts: An Introduction to Coastal Geomorphology, 3rd ed. (1984); Keith R. Dyer, Estuaries: A Physical Introduction (1998); and David Prandle, Estuaries: Dynamics, Mixing, Sedimentation and Morphology (2009).
Marianne Eelman, Waterfalls and Rapids: Natural Phenomena of the World (1998) is a general account describing the effects of waterfalls on the landscape. Technical works on the formation and change of river channels include Stephen Rice, Andre Roy, and Bruce Rhoads, Confluences, Tributaries, and the Fluvial Network (2008).
An introduction to the history and geography of the Congo River can be found in Peter Forbath, The River Congo (1977); and Peter Forbath, The River Congo: The Discovery, Exploration, and Exploitation of the World’s Most Dramatic River (1991).
An overview of the Niger River basin is contained within Jean Claude Olivry, Niger River Basin: A Vision for Sustainable Management (2005). Accounts of the Niger River environment include two essays in Bryan R. Davies and Keith F. Walker (eds.), The Ecology of River Systems (1986), both by R.L. Welcomme: “The Niger River System,” pp. 9–23, and “Fish of the Niger System,” pp. 25–48. Sanche De Gramont (pseud. for Ted Morgan), The Strong Brown God: The Story of the Niger River (1975), cover the history of the river’s exploration.
General works on the Nile River include Rushdi Said, The Geological Evolution of the River Nile (1981); and Martin A.J. Williams and Hugues Faure (eds.), The Sahara and the Nile (1980), on landforms and human settlement in the region. Hydrology is discussed in A. Azim Abul-Atta, Egypt and the Nile After the Construction of the High Aswan Dam (1978); and John Waterbury, Hydropolitics of the Nile Valley (1979); Robert O. Collins, The Nile (2002); P.P. Howell and J.A. Allan (eds.), The Nile: Sharing a Scarce Resource: A Historical and Technical Review of Water Management and of Economical and Legal Issues (2008).
Introductory overviews of the Amazon River basin include the treatment of the basin in N. Mark Collins (ed.), The Last Rain Forests (1990), pp. 110–129; and Catherine Caufield, In the Rainforest (1985).
Collections of essays on the basin include Harold Sioli (ed.), The Amazon: Limnology and Landscape Ecology of a Mighty Tropical River and Its Basin (1984); Robert E. Dickinson (ed.), The Geophysiology of Amazonia (1987); Marianne Schmink and Charles H. Wood (eds.), Frontier Expansion in Amazonia (1984); and John Hemming (ed.), Change in the Amazon Basin, 2 vol. (1985). Susanna Hecht and Alexander Cockburn, The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers, and Defenders of the Amazon (1989), is an overarching historical survey, richly documented, with a critical examination of the political, social, and economic background of the escalating degradation of the Amazon environment. D.A. Posey and Michael J. Balick (eds.), Human Impacts on Amazonia: The Role of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Conservation and Development (2006), reflects on the history, development, conservation, and protection of the Amazon basin.
Works on resources and ecology include Eneas Salati et al., “Amazonia,” in B.L. Turner II et al., The Earth as Transformed by Human Action (1990), pp. 479–493; David Cleary, The Brazilian Rainforest: Politics, Finance, Mining, and the Environment (1991); Kent H. Redford and Christine Padoch (eds.), Conservation of Neotropical Forests (1992); Michael Goulding, Amazon: The Flooded Forest (1989); William M. Denevan and Christine Padoch (eds.), Swidden-Fallow Agroforestry in the Peruvian Amazon (1988); Philip M. Fearnside, Human Carrying Capacity of the Brazilian Rainforest (1986); D.A. Posey and W. Balée (eds.), Resource Management in Amazonia (1989); and, on dwindling wildlife, Nigel J.H. Smith, Man, Fishes, and the Amazon (1981); and Kent H. Redford, “The Empty Forest,” BioScience, 42(6):412–422 (June 1992).
John McPhee, “Atchafalaya,” in his The Control of Nature (1989), pp. 3–92, a fascinating description of attempts to manage and control the lower Mississippi in Louisiana. Gerald M. Capers, The Mississippi River Before and After Mark Twain (1977), is a popular history. Technical accounts of the hydrology of the Mississippi River are found in Arthur C. Benke and Colbert E. Cushing (eds.), Rivers of North America (2005); and Ruth Patrick, Rivers of the United States, Part A: The Mississippi: River and Tributaries North of St. Louis, vol. 4 (1998).
Descriptions of the Ganges are found in surveys of the corresponding regions, such as R.L. Singh (ed.), India: A Regional Geography (1971, reprinted 2006); and S.D. Misra, Rivers of India (1970). More-focused subject studies are K.L. Rao, India’s Water Wealth, rev. ed. (1979); and G.K. Dutt and A.K. Kundu (eds.), Irrigation Atlas of India, 2nd rev. ed., 2 vol. (1987–89). The Ganges itself is examined in Khurshida Begum, Tension over the Farakka Barrage: A Techno-Political Tangle in South Asia (1988), discussing the political repercussions in connection with the Farakka Dam; Eric Newby, Slowly down the Ganges (1966, reissued 1986) is an illustrated descriptive guide; and Steven G. Darian, The Ganges in Myth and History (1978, reissued 2001) is a photographic essay. More recent useful descriptive accounts include K.S. Bilgrami, The Living Ganga (1991); and Ted Lewin, Sacred River (1994). A useful discussion on environmental problems and their control is provided in P.K. Agrawal, Environmental Protection and Pollution Control in the Ganga (1994), a volume of edited papers.
The Lena River is described in broad geographic surveys of North Asia that provide information on physical features and on economic, social, and cultural conditions: Paul E. Lydolph, Geography of the U.S.S.R., 5th ed. (1990); and Great Rivers of the World (1984), published by the National Geographic Society. Schemes for large-scale water transfer are described in two articles by Philip P. Micklin, “The Vast Diversion of Soviet Rivers,” Environment, 27(2):12–20, 40–45 (March 1985), and “The Status of the Soviet Union’s North-South Water Transfer Projects Before Their Abandonment in 1985–86,” Soviet Geography, 27(5):287–329 (May 1986). A useful description of permafrost and long-term climate change in this region is V.V. Baulin and N.S. Danilova, “Dynamics of Late Quaternary Permafrost in Siberia,” in A.A. Velichko, H.E. Wright, Jr., and C.W. Barnosky (eds.), Late Quaternary Environments of the Soviet Union, trans. from Russian (1984), pp. 69–86.
The Murray-Darling River system is described in Chris Hammer, The River: A Journey Through the Murray-Darling (2010); Murray-Darling Basin Commission, Rivers as Ecological Systems: The Murray-Darling Basin (2001); and Murray-Darling Basin Commission, The Darling (2005).
The Ob River is described in broad geographic surveys of North Asia that provide information on physical features and on economic, social, and cultural conditions: Paul E. Lydolph, Geography of the U.S.S.R., 5th ed. (1990); and Great Rivers of the World (1984), published by the National Geographic Society. Useful discussions of landscape evolution, the extent of glaciation, and long-term climate change in this region include Mikhail G. Grosswald, “Late-Weichselian Ice Sheets in Arctic and Pacific Siberia,” Quaternary International, 45–46(1):3–I8 (1998), and Valery Astakhov “The Last Ice Sheet of the Kara Sea: Terrestrial Constraints on its Age,” Quaternary International, 45–46(1):19–28 (1998).
Simon Winchester, The River at the Center of the World: A Journey up the Yangtze River and Back in Chinese Times (1996), provides useful descriptions of the Yangtze River from a historical perspective. Other descriptions in English include Jiang Liu, China’s Largest River (1980); the pictographic account How Man Wong, Exploring the Yangtze: China’s Longest River (1989); the valuable guidebook Judy Bonavia, A Guide to the Yangzi River (1985); and the comprehensive book Dai Qing (compiler), The River Dragon Has Come!, trans. from the Chinese by John G. Thibodeau and Philip B. Williams (1998). Physiography, culture, and history are imaginatively linked in Lyman P. Van Slyke, Yangtze: Nature, History, and the River (1988). A useful book on the Yangtze delta is Brian Hook (ed.), Shanghai and the Yangtze Delta: A City Reborn (1998). The issues surrounding the massive Three Gorges dam and reservoir project are presented from different points of view in Shiu-hung Luk and Joseph Whitney (eds.), Megaproject: A Case Study of China’s Three Gorges Project (1993); and Margaret Barber and Gráinne Ryder (eds.), Damming the Three Gorges, 2nd ed. (1993). These arguments are updated in Catherine Caufield, Rough Sailing at Three Gorges Dam (1997).
The Yenisey River is described in broad terms in Maria Shahgedanova (ed.), The Physical Geography of Northern Eurasia (2003). Several useful papers on the role of glaciation in the landscape evolution and the recent geological history of the Yenisey River can be found in a special issue of Quaternary International, vol. 45–46, no. 1 (1998).
Josef Breu, Atlas of the Danubian Countries, 11 issues in 2 vol. (1970–89), is a comprehensive, multilingual source on the Danube region’s geography. Much of the literature in English on the Danube itself consists of descriptive works based on travel experiences, such as Patrick Leigh Fermor, Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople from the Hook of Holland: The Middle Danube to the Iron Gates (1986); and Claudio Magris, Danube (1989; originally published in Italian, 1986).
Royal Institute of International Affairs, Regional Management of the Rhine (1975), is a collection of scholarly but readable papers on the effects of human activity on the ecology of the river, with analyses of transport, navigation, flood control, pollution, generation of electricity, regional planning, and recreational use. Roy E.H. Mellor, The Rhine: A Study in the Geography of Water Transport (1983), surveys the history of navigation on the river. A general treatment of attempts to control the Rhine River can be found in Marc Cioc, The Rhine: An Eco-Biography: 1815–2000 (2002).
Much of what has been written on the Rhône is included in general and regional geographies of Switzerland, France, and western Europe, such as Aubrey Diem, Western Europe, a Geographical Analysis (1979). A short account focusing on economic conditions, from the series Problem Regions of Europe, is Ian B. Thompson, The Lower Rhône and Marseille (1975). A description of the environmental conditions of the Rhône River appears in F.B. Walle, M. Nikolopoulou-Tamvakli, and W.J. Heinen (eds.), Environmental Condition of the Mediterranean Sea: European Community Countries (1993).