Applied Hydrology (Civil Engineering) [Paperback]

Ven Te Chow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1988 | ISBN-10: 0071001743 | ISBN-13: 978-0071001748 | Edition: International ed

This text is designed for a hydrologist, civil, or agricultural engineer. The text presents an integrated approach to hydrology, using the hydrologic/system or control volume as a mechanism for analyzing hydrologic problems.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Deceased

Larry W. Mays is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Arizona State University where he was the chair of the department. He was formerly Director of the Center for Research in Water Resources at the University of Texas at Austin where he also held an Engineering Foundation Endowed Professorship. A registered engineer in seven states and a professional hydrologist, he has served as a consultant to many organizations. Professor Mays is author of Water Resources Engineering (John Wily & Sons) and Optimal Control of Hydrosystems (Marcel Dekker), co-author of Applied Hydrology and Hydrosystems Engineering and Mangement (both from McGraw-Hill) and editor-in-chief of the Water Resources Handbook, Hydraulic Design Handbook, Water Distribution Systems Handbook, Stormwater Collection Systems Design Handbook, and the Urban Water Supply Handbook (all from McGraw-Hill). The Urban Water Supply Handbook received the 2002 Honorable Mention in Engineering Award given by the Association of American Publishers. He is also editor-in-chief of Reliability Analysis of Water Distribution Systems (ASCE) and co-editor of Computer Modeling of Free Surface and Pressurized Flow (Kluwer Academic Publishers). Among his honors is a distinguished alumnus award from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1999. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 585 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company; International ed edition (September 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071001743
• ISBN-13: 978-0071001748
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #259,555 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Text, January 3, 2006

By 

David B. Thompson (Carson City, Nevada USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Applied Hydrology (Hardcover)

I use this text to teach a first-semester graduate class for civil engineers who are targeting a graduate degree with emphasis on hydrology. I've been using the text for nearly ten years. It might be a little advanced for undergraduates, but certainly is in the grasp of advanced undergraduate students.

Applied Hydrology is the text I wanted way back when I was in graduate school. Chow was still alive but had not finished the book. I was introduced to his writing in his open-channel hydraulics text, which I thought (and still think) is the best. Applied Hydrology was assembled posthumously by Maidment and Mays, who did a good job putting together whatever remained of Chow's work. I'm very glad they undertook the process and published the work. It's an important text for my discipline specialty.

Part 1 of the text covers the basics and does it well. This material is timeless and will not change much as new research comes available. Part 2 covers analysis and shows its age, just a bit. Unit hydrographs and lumped-flow routing are old technologies and while updates are inevitable, the basic technologies will not change. Chapters 9 and 10 are a bit dated as substantial work has been done over the last 15 years. They're still good, but require supplementation. Chapters 11 and 12 again contain great fundamentals but the technology is changing. The theory of linear moments (L-moments) is working its way into hydrologic statistics for fitting distributions to datasets. Furthermore, there is a trend toward using resistant statistics (median, inter-quartile range, and others) for description of the statistics of hydrologic datasets. Part 3 on hydrologic design is still good, but is also showing its age just a little. Again, the basics are great and well-explained. However, as new data become available and new analyses of those data are accomplished, new interpretations also become available. This is true especially with precipitation atlases and the estimation of n-year precipitation events, and hence n-year hydrologic events.

My observations are not an indictment of Applied Hydrology; it remains my favorite engineering hydrology textbook and I will continue to use it to teach engineers about hydrology. In my opinion, this is the best upper-undergrauate/graduate engineering hydrology text available. Like all textbooks, it is beginning to show its age because technology is not stagnant. But its descriptions of core concepts and the application thereof remains top notch.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a must for water resource engineers and students, September 23, 2003

By 

Wen Chen (Tempe, AZ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Applied Hydrology (Hardcover)

I took a hydrology course taught by one of the authors (Larry Mays) using this book. Advantages of this book lies in (1) the arrangement of the contents is very logic-oriented, you don't feel aburpt jump from one chapter to another one, (2) the theory addressed in the text is concise, easy to read and understand, (3) the examples used to illustrate the theories are very correlated. Other books may be good too, however, in terms of "hydrology" alone, I haven't seen a better one. It is a useful reference for your understanding of hydrologic design manual, creteria.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT BOOK, July 30, 2001

By 

ORHAN GUNDUZ (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Applied Hydrology (Hardcover)

A must have reference for those of you guys in the field of Applied Hydrology. If you are tackling the task of modeling some particular hydrologic process, you will find the detailed descriptions and flow charts very handy. Step by step derivations of equations, excellent referencing and convenient chapter setup makes this book a first-to-look reference. Although it is a 1988 print, you will hardly feel it unless you really dig into details like flow routing in meandering rivers.

I believe you will enjoy reading this book...