08/09/2000

AU Fisheries Professor Pens Textbook on Water Quality Basics

AUBURN, Ala.—For almost 30 years, Claude E. Boyd has taught a water quality course to Auburn University seniors and graduate students through the AU Department of Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures.

Throughout those 30 years, he has searched for a textbook he believes is suitable for that class, but to no avail.

"Authors of water quality books seem to be interested more in presenting a rigorous, detailed treatment than in focusing on simplicity and clarity," Boyd said. "They also present the chemical aspects of water quality at levels that require advanced mathematics and physical chemistry, and their biological discussions tend to be quite advanced and theoretical. I never was able to find a book my students could use."

Until now, that is. At last, he has found the ideal textbook. It is one that provides an in-depth but relatively simple treatment of water quality and one that most students who have basic grasps of introductory chemistry, biology and algebra can understand and learn with "relatively little 'weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth,' " Boyd said.

The book is Water Quality: An Introduction (Kluwer Academic Publishers, June 2000). The author is Claude E. Boyd.

"This book is basically the exact lectures I've been teaching all these years in my water quality class," Boyd said. "It isn't a water chemistry book. It's a presentation of the fundamentals of water quality, focusing on the physical and chemical aspects of water quality and the interactions among physical, chemical and biological principles."

A significant number of students in Boyd's water quality class come from curricula other than fisheries, including engineering, natural resources, environmental science, wildlife, economics and education.

"For most of these students, their future success doesn't depend on a detailed knowledge of water quality," Boyd said. "They truly don't want to know every minute fact about the subject. This book presents the basics."

In the preface to Water Quality: An Introduction, Boyd gives credit to "all the students who have endured my class during the past 30 years, for their many questions and complaints that forced me to better organize my explanations of water quality phenomena."

The concise, 330-page book is being marketed as an excellent text for both a general course in water quality and a guide for self-study.

In its presentation of the basic aspects of water quality, Boyd's book emphasizes factors controlling the quality of surface waters. Although brief discussions of water pollution and water quality standards are included, the book does not broach the subject of water treatment.

Fisheries students and others seeking a higher level of knowledge can advance to Boyd's graduate course in water management.

Boyd, who holds a Ph.D. in water quality from Auburn, joined the faculty in 1971. He took the lead role in developing the university's course in water quality -- or water science, as it is officially called -- when he realized such a class did not exist.

Water Quality: An Introduction is not Boyd's maiden voyage into book publishing. His first book, Water Quality in Ponds for Aquaculture, was printed in 1979 and revised in 1990. That book has been used as a textbook in classrooms worldwide and has been reprinted in at least three foreign languages.

Three other textbooks that he either authored or co-authored also focus on water quality specifically as it relates to aquaculture. Those books are Hydrology and Water Supply for Pond Aquaculture, written with Kyung Yoo and published in 1994; Bottom Soils, Sediment and Pond Aquaculture, published in 1995; and Pond Aquaculture Water Quality Management, written with Craig Tucker and published in 1998

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Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station
3 Comer Hall, Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849
334-844-4877 (PHONE) 334-844-5892 (FAX)

Contact Jamie Creamer, 334-844-2783 or jcreamer@auburn.edu

08/09/00