CE 4061 - Hydrology

Course Description

This course provides an introduction to hydrology. The course has two basic objectives. The first objective is to provide students with an understanding of the basic principles which govern the distribution and transport of water in the environment. Th e second objective is to help students learn some basic approaches for developing a quantitative description of the rainfall-runoff process. The course also includes water quality topics.

Course Outline

Introduction/The hydrologic cycle
Precipitation
Streamflow
Infiltration
Evaporation
Transpiration
Introduction to hydrologic measurements
Rainfall-runoff; the rational method
Hydrograph analysis
Time-area methods
Unit hydrographs; convolution
Synthetic hydrographs Hydrologic modelling; the HEC1 Model
SCS Methods
Reservoir routing
Surface water flow
River routing
Probability basics and probability distributions
Recurrence intervals
Graphical presentation of data
Rainfall analysis for urban watersheds
Quantifying runoff in urban watersheds Water quality and environmental topics
GIS applications

Course Textbook

Hydrology: Water Quantity and Quality Control by Wanielista is used as the text for the subject. On occasion, the text is be supplemented by lecture notes and handouts.

Grade Formula

This course typically includes two in-class quizzes (worth 50%), approximately six homework sets (worth 30%), and two group projects (worth 20%).

Course Projects

This course typically includes two group project. One project commonly focusses on hydrologic data analysis and a second project involves watershed modeling using a basic hydrologic software package. Teams of three students work together and prepare a report summarizing the results of the project.