The Coastal Zone: Papers in Honor of H. Jesse Walker (review)

The Coastal Zone: Papers in Honor of H. Jesse Walker is an edited volume of papers that were presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, New Orleans, in 2003. The stated goal of the volume was to recognize the contributions of H. J. Walker to the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University, and to the broader research community. The papers, which were solicited by the editors from colleagues, students and friends, were published as part of LSU's Geoscience and Man Series. This is very fitting as H. J. Walker contributed to the Geoscience and Man Series through collective works on coastal resources (1975), coastal research (1976) and research techniques (1977).

The cover photograph and the title provide the reader with the impression that the volume is a sketch of a coastal scientist. Indeed, this book covers a wide range of topics relevant to the coastal zone, and it suffers from the weaknesses that characterize this genre of edited volume. It has ten chapters that span a range of topics from coastal evolution (by Grabau) to GIS modeling needs for Oil Spill Contingency Planning (by Ritchie). The studies range from the theoretical (Namikas), field-based (Psuty and Orme) and descriptive (Meyer-Arendt). Also included is the largely administrative "Louisiana's Oil Spill Research and Development Program" (Davis).

The problems with the breadth of topics covered in the volume are made worse by the lack or at least explicit definition of a common thread; the Geoscience and Man Series, including those edited by H. J. Walker (1975, 1976, 1977), typically have an explicit theme. With exceptions, the contributions to the volume did not attempt to frame their discussion in the context of Walker's research or even in the fields (e.g. arctic deltaic systems) where he has made his most significant contributions. Only Meyer-Arendt references works authored by Walker, and Grabau notes the role of Walker in the presented research. In this light, the value of this publication is for the most part in the specific topics discussed by the contributors rather than in the work as a whole; there are individual jewels for a patient reader to find.

While the editors did not organize the book in sections, this reader is able to identify commonalities in papers spread throughout the volume. Several of the papers provide interesting reviews of the complexity of coastal systems through time and space. Orme examines the morphodynamics of a small seasonal river mouth in Santa Monica Bay, California, in order to provide an improved understanding of seasonal estuaries to assist coastal management. Variability in the balance of river discharge and wave field leads to interannual variability in the morphodynamics. The results of this study are put into context by Brunsden who provides an overview of how geologic and geomorphic inheritance provides the boundary conditions for the contemporary processes acting at the coast. This dependency on the environmental context creates local and regional scale responses to changes in forcing factors. This is followed by Grabau who considers how the evolution of the Hawaiian Archipelago compares with interior landforms. The inability to fit the islands within an ergodic model is attributed to the removal of sediments to abyssal depths and failures of the submarine slopes; the cycle of erosion is reset to zero. Contemporary processes and morphology are determined by the larger geologic and oceanographic setting. The importance of inherited geomorphologic features is further examined by Psuty. Inherited features along with complex fluvial and coastal process linkages have created interesting morpho-sedimentological units in Barnegat Bay, New Jersey. The end result is a complex sedimentary environment in which sedimentary features are unrelated to the more recent processes of estuarine sedimentation.

In a paper dealing with modifications to the coast, DeLaune et al. note that the rapid rate...