CE 51: Engineering Hydrology

Lecture 1: Introduction
 While life on Earth depends upon water,
many people have little or no understanding of
hydrology – the science of water. However,
because everyone influences water quality and
availability by their actions and use of water, the
protection, conservation, and management of
water supplies and water quality depend upon
all of us understanding the basic concepts of
hydrology.
Watershed
A watershed is defined as an area of land in
which all of the incoming precipitation drains
(i.e., “sheds”) to the same place -- toward the
same body of water or the same topographic
low area (e.g., a sinkhole) -- as a result of its
topography.
 Watershed = Catchment = Basin
• The area of land that
drains water, sediment and
dissolved materials to a
common outlet.
• Watersheds are separated
by divides
• Can be any size, from a
few acres to hundreds of
square miles
• Sub-watershed =
watershed within a
watershed
 Stream Order

• Smallest
tributaries are
1st order
• Two 1st orders
join to form 2nd
order
• Two 2nd orders
join to form 3rd
order, etc.
Watershed Terminologies
• Headwaters
- uplands of a watershed or the upper reaches of
a watershed’s drainages where soil moisture and
surface flow first accumulate.
• mouth of a watershed
- area of outflow for the watershed, at the point
where a stream or river meets or feeds another
water body
• confluence
– point of merger of two or more water bodies
 Components of hydrologic cycle
Location % of total

Oceans (salt water) 97.5

Fresh water 2.5
Icecaps and glaciers 1.85
Groundwater 0.64
Lakes, rivers, soil, atmosphere 0.01
Hydrologic Cycle
- describes how water is stored and moves
within and among watersheds
- The major components of the hydrologic
cycle are precipitation, evaporation,
transpiration, soil water, groundwater, and
streamflow.
Hydrologic Cycle
Hydrologic Cycle

URI Healthy Landscapes Program

• Precipitation
- provides the input of water to watersheds,
primarily as rain, snow, sleet, and hail. Fog and
freezing fog also may provide a substantial
amount of the annual precipitation input in
some high-elevation ecosystems.
• Interception
- Precipitation caught by the forest canopy.
Some intercepted precipitation never reaches
the ground because it is evaporated back to
the atmosphere.
• Sublimation
- the transformation of solid precipitation
(snow or ice) directly to a gas
• throughfall
- Within forests, the portion of intercepted
precipitation that drips or falls to the ground
from the canopy
• Stemflow
- Within forests, the portion that runs down
the branches and trunk of the tree to reach
the ground
• Evaporation
- loss of moisture from a watershed. Water can be
evaporated from any surface, including plants, water
bodies, the soil surface, buildings, roads, and parking areas.
• Transpiration
- another way moisture is lost from a watershed.
Transpiration is evaporation of water from leaf stomata
(i.e., tiny leaf openings where gases are exchanged)
following movement of ground moisture from the roots
upward through the tree (i.e., translocation). Consequently,
for transpiration to occur, moisture must be present in the
upper layers of the soil where feeder roots are
predominantly present. In forests, transpiration accounts
for much greater losses of moisture than any other
mechanism in the hydrologic cycle
• Evaporation and transpiration rates vary widely
depending upon many factors, including
precipitation, temperature, aspect, humidity, and
wind
• groundwater recharge
- Groundwater occurs in all types of bedrock
beneath the soil. The rock or soil material that
holds groundwater is called an aquifer, and the
water table is the top surface of the groundwater
and the aquifer. Consequently, the water table
separates the saturated zone from the overlying
unsaturated zone where fractures and voids
contain water along with air.
• Groundwater aquifers that are located
relatively near the ground surface tend to be
small and are termed seasonal aquifers, or
local aquifers.
• Groundwater aquifers that are located in deep
bedrock typically are much larger, and are
termed regional aquifers because they may
extend under many small and/or large
watersheds. They tend to be very thick and
hold large quantities of old water (e.g., tens of
years to thousands of years old).
• Groundwater also provides water for
streamflow through contributions known as
baseflow. Baseflow is the portion of
streamflow that is not attributable to current
precipitation or snowmelt inputs and is the
only portion of streamflow that is present
during precipitation-free and snowmelt- free
periods.
• Stormflow is the component of streamflow
that results directly from current precipitation
or snowmelt events.
 Lakes basin and as weather systems move through,
they deposit moisture in the form of rain, snow, hail or
sleet. Water enters the system as either precipitation
directly on the lake surface, runoff from the surrounding
land, groundwater, or inflow from upstream lakes.
Precipitation falling on the land infiltrates into the ground
through percolation to replenish the groundwater. When
water accumulates below ground in the spaces between
soil and rock, it is called groundwater.
Water leaves the system through evaporation from
the land and water surface or through transpiration, a
process where moisture is released from plants into the
atmosphere. Water also leaves the system through
groundwater outflow, consumptive uses (drinking water,
industrial/agricultural uses, etc.), diversions, and outflows
to downstream lakes or rivers.
 Development Impacts
on the Water Cycle

40% 30%

10% 15%
50%
Natural Landscape Developed
 Low runoff - High runoff, Low recharge
 High recharge - Nuisance flooding
 Healthy summer stream flow - Lower water tables
 Natural pollutant treatment - Low stream flow
 Hydrograph pattern is the result of:
Watershed characteristics
soils  infiltration rates

land use  impervious

surfaces, vegetation, wetlands

slope, shape

Climate
humid vs. arid
previous rainfall

Storm characteristics
intensity, duration
Stable channels, excellent habitat
structure, good to excellent water
quality, diverse communities of fish
and aquatic insects

Clear signs of degradation due

to urbanization. Erosion and
channel widening, unstable
banks, fair to good water
quality, declining stream
biodiversity
Essentially conduits for
stormflow, no longer able to
support diverse stream
communities, unstable stream
channel, severe erosion