River Plants of Western Europe : The Macrophytic Vegetation of Watercourses of the European Economic Community Book

This book describes and discusses the vegetation of rivers and other watercourses in Europe with an emphasis upon distributional, community and historical ecology. It is firmly based upon many years of field investigations carried out by the author in the countries of the European Economic Community and therefore contains much original research. Its main purpose is to increase our understanding of river vegetation in relation to the varying physical characteristics of the watercourses. The rivers of the EEC are considered in detail, with the emphasis upon the influences of landscape, geology, climate, settlement patterns, water use and management and pollution. All of these factors vary widely over the region and affect the vegetation, which is well described from about 30,000 site records.