BOOK REVIEW

A. S. Isaar, Climate Change during the Holoceneand their Impact on Hydrological Systems

2004, 127 pp, Paperback, £24.99, ISBN 0-521-60773-6

Andrew Henderson

Published online: 25 September 2007

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007

The motivation for this book is to assess the role of

changing Holocene climate and how this has

impacted hydrological systems. This is a very

worthwhile subject, since one of the major concerns

of predicted climate warming is how the regions most

susceptibility to drought, such as the Sahara, NW

China, Middle East, will respond to such climate

changes and lessons from the Holocene, notably the

‘climatic-optima’ in the mid-Holocene, are important

in assessing this. Unfortunately this volume fails to

deliver any insightful contributions to the debate and,

given that it aims to assess impacts on hydrological

systems, there is a remarkable lack of discussion

about the consequences for lakes (which I know we

all hold dear to our hearts!). The volume is arranged

in chapters that deal with different areas of the world,

with each explaining the contemporary climate and

the past climate of that region, sometimes split into

further, more regionally-specific sections. Most

noticeable is that the book is very unbalanced, with

some regions given a cursory mention, while others

have been developed with much more detail, such

that readers interested in a particular region may be

disappointed. Furthermore, there are some regions

(e.g. South America) that have not even been

addressed and I’m unsure why they have been left

out of the discussion. Given the book’s publication

date the references are significantly out of date and

this further hinders the development of reasonable

discussion in certain regions. Moreover, the author

wholly ignores a number of older key papers, which

means that it becomes further unbalanced.

The initial focus of this book is on the Levant

region of the eastern Mediterranean, which was

chosen because of (a) its location at the transition

between two climate zones, namely the northern

hemisphere westerlies and the Intertropical Conver-

gence Zone (ITCZ), (b) the location of the River Nile

in this region, (c) the moderate size of the Mediter-

ranean sea, which suggests that climate changes are

likely to be synchronous, and (d) the long history of

human occupation in the area. It is also likely that the

author’s long history of working in the region has

influenced this choice. The first chapter offers a

detailed analysis of the contemporary climate of the

Levant and the climate episodes during the Holocene,

with specific reference to the well-known periods of

human occupation in the region. There is reference to

archaeological studies and palaeoclimatological data

in order to build up a history of hydrological and

human society changes in the region. However, there

is no real analysis of the possible forcing factors

involved and how these are linked to changes in

hydrology and human distribution. The chapter ends

rather abruptly, offering no summery or major

conclusions as to the extent to which hydrological

A. Henderson (&)

Department of Plant Biology, University of Illinois, 265

Morrill Hall, 505 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801,

USA

e-mail: ahenders@life.uiuc.edu

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J Paleolimnol (2007) 38:619–620

DOI 10.1007/s10933-007-9142-x

changes have driven the rise and fall of civilizations

and no consideration of whether these were related to

climate or if other factors were involved. The chapter

offers a detailed account of the major periods of

human occupation, but this is noticeably lacking from

the sections of the book that deal with other regions.

The following chapters then attempt to summarize

data from Europe, East Asia, Africa and western USA

and Mexico both temporally and spatially. At times

there seems to be an odd choice of which countries

are discussed and the depth of analysis varies greatly.

A feature of the chapters is that they end with no

summary or analysis of the data, particularly with

regards to the influence of forcing factors and

changing climate boundaries on the climate and the

hydrological systems in their respective regions. In

the chapter dealing with Holocene changes in East

Asia, there is confusion about the contemporary

climate as the author states it is dominated by polar

continental air masses. Although the author mentions

the tropical-sub-tropical ocean air mass, there is no

in-depth discussion of the development of the mon-

soons, which are arguably the most important

climate-related hydrological phenomena on the

globe.

The general conclusions of the book offer some

thoughts on the correlation of events between the

different regions discussed in the previous chapters,

but remain to be fully developed. The conclusions

then turn to the causes of climate changes during the

Holocene. Here, one of the failings of the book is

highlighted again, as the discussion of what is forcing

hydrological changes during the Holocene is cursory

and out-dated references have been used to develop

the argument, nevertheless they remain relevant.

Overall, this book represents a good starting point

for some of the basic concepts of hydrological change

during the Holocene and the possible mechanisms

that control them, but by trying to discuss this

globally means that the book loses focus and this is to

its detriment.

620 J Paleolimnol (2007) 38:619–620

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