Preface

During the past fifty years，I have dealt with river flows. I hoped to reduce flooding damages while facilitating a harmonious existence between humans and the environment. In the year 1999，I retired from a senior professorship in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of California at Berkeley.

The first main purposes of this book is to introduce the general management of river，floods and droughts，the ecological consideration of rivers and the Three Gorge Dam in China based on a few limited field data after the completion of this dam. The second part of this book is to describe the historical change of the characteristics of Chinese students in the US and my life.

I was born in Beijing in the year 1929. After the graduation from the Shanghai High School，my parents sent me to study at the US in August，1949. I was rather fortunate to marry my wife at the University of Michigan and then to study under the esteem professor Hans Albert Einstein at the University of California at Berkeley. He was a son of Albert Einstein. My Professor encouraged me to create my own subject to study and not just to continue the research that he had conducted. Mydear wife thankfully encouraged me to concentrate more on scholarly research which has been enormously significantly to my career.

Since these two people have had greatly influence on me and thus this book is dedicated to them.

Because I dealt with river flows，often friends have asked me the next few questions:

1．We have spent a great deal efforts in flood management around the world. Why do we still face flood damages now and what are the current flood policy as well as the future directions in dealing with floods?

2．We have heard a lot of ecological considerations on river management, What have we done?

3．There has been active discussion on the Three Gorge Dam at the Yangtze River，China. What is my view on this Dam?

Although the main audience for this book is for general public but I firmly believe that this book would be useful also to technical specialists.

The first chapter is to briefly introduce the water problems in the world with three examples of water resource conflicts. Often national survival may depend on the nature of its water supply. Water supply in the future could be more important than energy supply in some regions around the world.

After a major 1993 Mississippi River flood，the US Congress appointed a committee to evaluate its flood policy. I was a member on this committee and all our recommendations were adopted by the society. This will be discussed in Chapter 2.

During the Second International Congress on Ecological Considerationof Rivers in 1996，I gave a keynote speech to summarize the current procedures used to protect the ecology of rivers and this is given in Chapter 3.

The first approach is to regulate the river flows according to certain needs of dominate species. I discussed my project on whooping cranes at the Niobrara River in Nebraska to demonstrate this case. If several important biological species require conflicting demands，we will restore the river environment into some historical conditions. I discussed my project on the Kissimmee River Restoration Project as an example. Since this is the largest restoration project in the world，my 500 million dollar project was mentioned by the three major evening news programs: CBS，NBC and ABC .The Wall Street Journalalso mentioned this effort.

Since dams has been a focal point for the environmental discussion of river projects. Chapter 4 discusses various effects of dams and the important considerations on the hydraulic design of dams. There are also several international organizations in dealing with conflicts created by the developments of dams.

Although I haven been invited by several agencies to visit various river systems in China，I had never been directly involved in any Chinese projects. All my information came from few private conversations and reading a few published articles or books. In Chapter 5，I discussed the planning of this Three Gorge Dam based on the hydrological and sedimentation engineering aspects.

The second part of this book is to describe the change of the characteristics of oversea Chinese students to the US in the past hundred years since the days of my maternal grandfather Jim Ten You（詹天佑）.He was in the first group of Chinese students sent by the Chinese Government to study in the US. After graduating from the Yale University, he returned to China to build some important and difficult railroads in China，with much less time and funding than that estimated by foreign companies. At that time many foreign specialists clearly stated that none Chinese could have built that. The current Chinese government has built an entire museum to honor him in Beijing.

From Chapter 6 to Chapter 9，I described my life with emphasis on international visits. Each Chapter in this book can be read independently. In these chapters，first I described my life as a student in the University of Michigan as well as in the University of California at Berkeley. During the past fifty years，I have written several technical books published by John Wiley & Sons，McGraw Hill and Water Resources Publications. I was also fortunate to receive numerous national and international awards as stated in the last section of the Chapter 10. I have had the pleasure to participate in water resources projects for United Nations，World Bank and also in twenty countries.

When I closed my eyes，I could always feel the busy Mississippi River, the roaring of the Brahmaputra River，the romantic Nile River and the angry Yangtze River.