The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment is dedicated to providing information to the public about the importance of environmental and water systems. Books are sponsored by The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University and available for purchase from publishers.
Texas A&M University Press, 2012
By Natalie H. Wiest
Maps by Jerry Moulden
Foreword by Andrew Sansom
Within about seventy-five miles of downtown Houston, some 1,500 miles of rivers, creeks, lakes, bayous, and bays await discovery. Canoeing and Kayaking Houston Waterways, by longtime paddler Natalie Wiest, is the perfect companion for anyone who wants to experience Houston’s well-watered landscape from the seat of a kayak or canoe.
Texas A&M University Press, 2011
By Jim Kimmel
Photographs by Jerry Touchstone Kimmel
Foreword by Andrew Sansom
From its ancient headwaters on the semiarid plains of eastern New Mexico to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico, the Brazos River carves a huge and paradoxical crescent through Texas geography and history. Its average flow is the largest of Texas rivers, but its floods, low flows, silt, and natural salt have often frustrated human desires. It is one of the most dammed of Texas rivers, but its lower four hundred miles constitute one of the longest undammed stretches of river in North America. In 2011 Jim Kimmel received a Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography given by the Association of American Geographer's in his book Exploring the Brazos River.
Texas A&M University Press, 2008
By Jonathan Burnett
Foreword by Andrew Sansom
How many times have you heard the television or radio alert, “We are now under a flash flood watch”? While the destructive force of flash flooding is a regular occurrence in the state and has caused a tremendous amount of damage and heartache over the years, no one until now has recorded in a single book the history of flash floods in Texas.
After combing libraries and archives, grilling county historians, trekking to flood sites, and collecting scores of graphic photographs, Jonathan Burnett chose twenty-eight floods from around the state to create this narrative of a century of disastrous events. Beginning with the famous Austin dam break of 1900 and ending with the historic 2002 flooding in the Hill Country, Burnett chronicles the causes and courses of these catastrophic floods as well as their costs in material damage and human lives.
Dramatic photographs of each event enhance the harrowing accounts of danger spawned by nature on a rampage. Together, the stories and the pictures give readers a vivid and lasting image of the power and unpredictability of flash floods in Texas.
Jonathan Burnette is an engineer in the semiconductor field in Austin, Texas. His theoretical work related to hydrology and floodwater flows led him to a fascination with floods and a decade-long quest for information.
Texas A&M University Press, 2007
By Chad Thomas, Timothy H. Bonner, and Bobby G. Whiteside
Foreword by Fran Gelwick
Preface by Andrew Sansom
Containing habitat information, physical descriptions, photographs, and range maps for more than 150 species of freshwater fishes that can be found in Texas, this field guide is an indispensable reference and research tool for ichthyologists, professional fisheries biologists, amateur naturalists, and anglers alike.
The introductory section offers an illustrated guide to the common counts and measurements used for fish identification; a brief explanation of fish phylogeny; and a scientific key to help identify the fish families in Texas.
The book includes species accounts of native and introduced fishes found in the freshwaters of Texas. Each account covers the physical characteristics, habitat, and distribution of the fish, with additional comments of interest or importance to its life history and conservation status. With the largest collection to date of color photographs, including various color phases (breeding and non- breeding colors), the book also includes range maps within the species accounts. The closing pages of the book feature a glossary and reference section.
In a time when the state's water resources are beset by issues growing in both number and complexity, this book provides information for professionals and policy makers. It also contributes to the natural history education of the public.
Texas A&M University Press, 2010
Edited by Ken Kramer
Photographs by Charles Kruvand
Foreword by Andrew Sansom
In ten impassioned essays, veteran Texas environmental advocates and conservation professionals step outside their roles as lawyers, lobbyists, administrators, consultants, and researchers to write about water. Their personal stories of what the springs, rivers, bottomlands, bayous, marshes, estuaries, bays, lakes, and reservoirs mean to them and to our state come alive in the landscape photography of Charles Kruvand.
Allied with the Texas Living Waters Project (a joint education and policy initiative of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Environmental Defense Fund, among others), editor Ken Kramer joins his fellow activists in a call to keep rivers flowing, to protect wildlife habitat, and to save tax dollars by using water efficiently and sustainably (http://www.texaswatermatters.org/).
Inside this book:
Introduction: the Living Waters of Texas—Ken Kramer
Where the First Raindrop Falls—David K. Langford
Springing to Life: Keeping the Waters Flowing—Dianne Wassenich
Hooked on Rivers—Myron J. Hess
Falling in Love with Bottomlands: Waters and Forests of East Texas—Janice Bezanson
On the Banks of the Bayous: Preserving Nature in an Urban Environment—Mary Ellen Whitworth
A Taste of the Marsh—Susan Raleigh Kaderka
Bays and Estuaries of Texas: An Ephemeral Treasure?—Ben F. Vaughan III
Rio Grande: Fragile Lifeline in the Desert—Mary E. Kelly
Leaving a Water Legacy for Texas—Ann Thomas Hamilton
Texas Water Politics: Forty Years of Going with the Flow—Ken Kramer
Ken Kramer is the director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. He has an extensive record of involvement in water and other environmental issues, serving on advisory committees for state and local agencies. Awarded for his work by the governor of Texas, the Sportsmen Conservationists of Texas, the League of Women Voters, and the Nature Conservancy, he lives in Austin. His PhD in political science is from Rice University.
Charles Kruvand is an Austin-based photographer whose work has been featured throughout Texas, including at the Dallas Museum of Natural History, the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, the Wichita Falls Museum of Art, the Heard Natural Science Museum, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and the International Museum of Art and Science in McAllen. His photographs are also in the corporate collections of Kodak, Texas Instruments, Frito-Lay, and Citigroup.
Texas A&M University Press, 2012
By Rudolph A. Rosen
Illustrations by Katie Dobson Cundiff
Foreword by Andrew Sansom
Texas A&M University Press, 2009
By Gina Donovan, Stephen D. Lange and Adrian F. van Dellen
Foreword by Andrew Sansom
The Neches River winds through a large portion of Texas’ scarce public lands, and Neches River User Guide, a project of the Texas Conservation Alliance, offers outdoor enthusiasts a menu of ways to enjoy this wild Texas river.
As users flip through this guide book, its user-friendly maps will reveal the towns, roads, entry points, bridges, public lands, parks, and other landmarks along nearly 360 miles of the river’s course. Each map details practical information about public access points, potential hazards, camping facilities, and GPS coordinates for points of interest.
The guide also includes a brief description of the archeology and history of human habitation along the river, as well as photographs of plants and animals common in the bottomland hardwood ecosystem. A final note on conservation efforts, past and present, will help readers join in protecting the river for future generations.
Gina Donovan is executive director of the Houston Audubon Society. Co-founder of the East Texas Forest & Wildlife Coalition, she also served on the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Rivers Conservation Advisory Board. She has canoed nearly 400 miles of the Neches River.
Stephen D. Lange is a Regional GIS Specialist for the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department’s Wildlife Division in Tyler, Texas. Adrian F. Van Dellen, DVM, is a retired United States Air Force pathologist and an avid canoer and nature photographer.
Texas A&M University Press, 2012
By George Bristol
Foreword by Andrew Sansom
When George Bristol first saw the mountains surrounding East Glacier, Montana, in the early summer of 1961, he was, in his own words, awed to his depths. Thus began a love affair with nature and public parks that has endured for more than fifty years. This same love affair would lead Bristol to become a crusader for America’s national parks and, later, to be largely credited for the rescue of the ailing public park system in his home state.
Texas A&M University Press, 2008
By Wayne H. McAlister
Foreword by Andrew Sansom
For more than forty years, Wayne H. McAlister has canoed the Guadalupe River, sometimes called the “top recreational river in Texas.” In Paddling the Guadalupe, he guides readers down this 400-mile river whose waters spring from the limestone of the Hill Country in Kerr County, meander across the broad Coastal Plain, and finally empty into the Gulf of Mexico at San Antonio Bay.
With the expertise of a life and career immersed in nature, he introduces readers to the places, people, plants, and animals—large and small, aquatic and terrestrial—that depend on the Guadalupe for either their livelihoods or their existence. With affection and humor (and sometimes aggravation), he wryly comments on the development and human activity along the river’s course, from the headwaters west of Kerrville to its mouth near Tivoli, just east of Refugio.
For the traveler, either on the river or along its course, McAlister’s knowledge of the grists, sawmills, dams, bridges, swimming holes, and reservoirs bring the history of familiar towns—Comfort, Canyon Lake, New Braunfels, Seguin, Gonzales, Cuero, and Victoria among them—to life. His love of the natural world, which shares the river’s bounty, will inspire and enhance anyone’s experience of the Guadalupe, from the serious canoer to the family vacationer.
Photographs taken over many years provide an intimate perspective, and sixteen maps help orient those interested in getting to know the river on a more personal basis.
After a thirty-year career as a biology professor at Victoria College, Wayne H. McAlister became an environmental education specialist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Stationed on Matagorda Island, he developed and presented programs on barrier island ecology for ten years before retiring to his home on the Guadalupe River. He is the author or coauthor of three books, including Life on Matagorda Island published by Texas A&M University Press.
Texas A&M University Press, 2006
By Richard M. Donovan
Foreword by Andrew Sansom
From its origins on a sandy hillside in Van Zandt County, the Neches River flows through the heart of East Texas. In its watershed lies some of the wildest country in Texas, tucked amid the remains of one of the finest hardwood forests in the world.
With the goal of keeping the Neches flowing free, East Texas native and riverman Richard M. Donovan takes readers canoeing down a two-hundred-mile stretch of the upper Neches. Through two national forests and mile after mile of remote river woodlands, he chronicles the river's natural and cultural history, describes its animal inhabitants, recounts stories of early settlers and East Texas hunting traditions, and calls attention to the recreational potential of the river for paddlers and others, whether residents or visitors.
Donovan also makes a case against damming the river. He convincingly promotes the idea of turning the Neches into a National Wild and Scenic River, preserving forever the river's natural flow and what remains of the verdant bottomlands of this historic watercourse.
Texas A&M University Press, 2012
By Margie Crisp
Foreword by Andrew Sansom
Writer and artist Margie Crisp has traveled the length of Texas’ Colorado River, which rises in Dawson County, south of Lubbock, and flows 860 miles southeast across the state to its mouth on the Gulf of Mexico at Matagorda Bay. Echoing the truth of Heraclitus’s ancient dictum, the river’s character changes dramatically from its dusty headwaters on the High Plains to its meandering presence on the coastal prairie. The Colorado is the longest river with both its source and its mouth in Texas, and its water, from beginning to end, provides for the state’s agricultural, municipal, and recreational needs.
Texas A&M University Press, 2006
By Jim Kimmel
Photographs by Jerry Touchstone Kimmel
Foreword by Andrew Sansom
The San Marcos springs have flowed for around ten million years. In this ode to the river they form, Jim Kimmel brings us a picture of a watercourse brimming with life, past and present. Native, non-native, prehistoric, and modern-day plants, animals, and people have inhabited the river and its banks. Kimmel touches on them all with the affectionate and knowledgeable voice of one whose own life has been closely linked to the San Marcos.
Texas A&M University Press, 2006
By Andrew Sansom
Illustrations by Clemente Guzman III
In December 2004, an aging black Labrador retriever on the first hunting trip of her long, good life spooked at the sound of gunshot and was lost amid the frigid rice fields of the Texas coastal prairie. For a week her owner searched for his old companion, knowing that her age and inexperience were stacked against her survival. When family obligations pulled him halfway across the country, sadness and gloom pervaded the approaching holiday. Then a freak snowstorm, a distant phone call, and a friend’s lucky timing brought an unexpected reminder of the magic of Christmas.
University of Texas Press, 2008
By Andrew Sansom
Foreword by Denise Trauth
No natural resource issue has greater significance for the future of Texas than water. The state's demand for water for municipal, industrial, agricultural, and recreational uses continues to grow exponentially, while the supply from rivers, lakes, aquifers, and reservoirs is limited. To help Texans manage their water resources today and plan for future needs, one of Texas's top water experts has compiled this authoritative overview of water issues in Texas.
Water in Texas covers all the major themes in water management and conservation:
Illustrated with color photographs and maps, Water in Texas will be the essential resource for landowners, citizen activists, policymakers, and city planners.
Texas A&M University Press, 2008
By Lawrence E. Estaville and Richard A. Earl
Preface by Andrew Sansom
Rainfall, hurricanes, rivers, reservoirs, springs, lakes, aquifers, wetlands, floodplains, water parks, irrigation, wells—the list of water-related topics in Texas is long and critical to the state’s economic and political future. Texas Water Atlas provides the first comprehensive reference for water-related topics in Texas.
Geographers Lawrence E. Estaville and Richard A. Earl have compiled a host of data to visually convey vital information on Texas’ climate, surface and groundwater, water uses and hazards, water quantity and quality, recreation, future supply projections, and the environmental management of its water resources. In addition to more than 150 color maps, the book includes brief introductions to each chapter and a Texas water timeline that traces the state’s water events since European settlement.
An excellent resource for teachers, students, and policy makers, the atlas promises also to be an invaluable tool for conservation professionals and the general public.
Lawrence E. Estaville is professor of geography at Texas State University in San Marcos. An award-winning teacher, he has received the distinguished achievement award from the National Council for Geographic Education. Richard A. Earl, recipient of the distinguished teaching award from the National Council for Geographic Education, is associate professor of geography at Texas State University where he teaches courses on water resources and environmental management.
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