Hydrology

The course aims at providing knowledge about agro-hydrological measures, models and processes in anthropic and natural catchments with a focus in contexts where the impact of humans on water resources is emphasized by climate change and urban expansion.
In particular, the course aims to:
investigate physical principles and processes that govern hydrology at small and medium catchment scale and in peri-urban and rural environments including: precipitation, interception, energy balance, evaporation, evapotranspiration, infiltration, soil-water and groundwater movement, surface water storage and runoff generation and propagation;
address the monitoring of agro-hydrological variables, and explore existing databases;
deal with water-quality and water resources management issues with the support of case studies;
acquire competencies in the use of Geographic Information Systems (e.g. QGis), excel and common program languages (e.g. Matlab) for hydrological analysis.

Upon completing this course, students will emerge with a deeper understanding of the main hydrological processes and how they interact in the water cycle, plant growing and watershed restoration.
In particular, the students should be able to:
comprehend the hydrologic cycle components, the related major water quantity and quality challenges and their relevance for the resilience of agro-ecosystems and crop productions;
comprehend the physics of water flow transport processes in the SVAT (Soil-Vegetation-Atmosphere) environment. Students will be able to represent those processes with mass and energy conservation equations, and apply those equations in assessing water quantity in agricultural systems;
comprehend lumped and distributed dynamic water balance agro-hydrological models for simulating crop water needs and planning water allocation for irrigation purposes;
develop proficiency in obtaining, modifying, and interpreting spatial and temporal data related to the analysis of agro-hydrologic systems and demonstrate geospatial analysis skills;
comprehend factors affecting the rainfall-runoff processes from total rainfall to direct runoff and the formation of flood hydrographs. Students will be able (i) to analyze intensity-duration-frequency curves, (ii) to elaborate synthetic hyetographs, (iii) to assess time of concentration and (iv) to compute direct runoff floods, volumes and hydrological losses given storm data, as well as manipulate hydrograph information;
comprehend factors controlling formation and propagation of runoff on anthropic catchments under hydrological-invariance restrictions;
comprehend the hydrological response of natural watershed before and after disturbances such as, heavy storms, soil and plant degradation, land use change.
demonstrate management, communication and teamwork skills needed to work constructively and professionally on multi-disciplinary teams.