This guidebook, now thoroughly updated and revised in its second edition, gives comprehensive advice on the designing and setting up of monitoring programmes for the purpose of providing valid data for water quality assessments in all types of freshwater bodies. It is clearly and concisely written in order to provide the essential information for all agencies and individuals responsible for the water quality.

A Water Quality Assessment of the Former Soviet Union focuses on water quality issues using examples from around the former Soviet Union. It covers the background to the natural water resources and composition of surface and ground waters in the former Soviet Union and then proceeds to examine the influence of human activity on those resources and water quality systems. With more than one hundred line illustrations and tables, the long-term detailed case studies of the Lower Don Basin, the Amu Darya river, the Rybinsk reservoir, the Dnieper river, Lakes Baikal and Ladoga, and water resources in Moscow and the Moscow region, this will enable valuable lessons in environmental management to be learnt. A Water Quality Assessment of the Former Soviet Union is a valuable source of up-to-date information and case studies for the professional in government, national and international organisations, and water utilities. It will be a useful reference in research institutes and university libraries.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) established the National Water Quality Assesment (NAWQA) program in 1985 to assess water quality conditions and trends in representative river basins and aquifers across the United States. With this report, the NRC's Water Science and Technology Board has provided advice to USGS regarding NAWQA five separate times as the program evolved from an unfunded concept to a mature and nationally-recognized program in 2002. This report assesses the program's development and representative accomplishments to date and makes recommendations on opportunities to improve NAWQA as it begins its second decade of nationwide monitoring.