The last decade has seen a burgeoning of research activity concerned with the relationship between river behaviour and environmental change. This research has involved a wide range of disciplines including geomorphology, geophysics, archaeology, palaoecology, engineering and planning. Central to many studies has been causality and the degree to which river behaviour reflects extrinsic or intrinsic controls. Contents: 1.The context. Fluvial archives of environmental change; Alluvial systematics. 2. Tectonic forcing: Crustal instability and the fluvial record. The mass terrace sequence at Maastricht, SE Netherlands: evidence for 200 m of late Neogene and Quaternary surface uplift; Flow in the lower continental crust as a mechanism for the Quaternary uplift of the Rhenish Massif, northwest Europe. 3. Climate forcing: Records of Pleistocene and Holocene river behaviour. 4. Geoarchaeological perspectives and the human impact. 5. Modelling and monitoring of sediment fluxes and river channel dynamics. The book is of interest to earth scientists, archaeologists and river managers who, confronted by an unstable reach, must eastablish its cause, including both the temporal and spatial context.