Surface and Groundwater Hydrology

On successful completion of this short course you will be able to:

• Understand the basic hydraulic principles of static and moving water
• Measure point and estimate areal rainfall
• Estimate potential evapotranspiration from weather data and understand the relationship between actual and potential evapotranspiration
• Differentiate between various runoff processes and identify the conditions under which each are important
• Choose the appropriate flow measurement technique for different types of watercourses
• Calculate the discharge of a watercourse by the velocity area method and by use of weirs and flumes
• Construct a rating curve for a watercourse
• Describe and conceptualise the occurrence and movement of groundwater
• Apply Darcy’s Law to simple groundwater flow problems
• Design and carry out groundwater pumping tests, and analyse the resulting data
• Explain the mechanisms of groundwater recharge in different climatic environments.

• The hydrological cycle and the influence of man
• Basics of hydraulics: SI Units, properties of fluids, basic mechanics
• Hydrostatics: Pressure, pressure measurement, pressure and forces on submerged surfaces
• Fluids in motion: Types of flow. Continuity, energy and momentum equations and their applications. Behaviour of a real fluid
• Precipitation, measurement of precipitation amount and intensity, spatial analysis. Interception and depression storage. Evapotranspiration, Penman approach, actual evapotranspiration. Runoff processes; overland flow, interflow, base flow
• Runoff measurement; velocity area methods. Structures; hydraulic principles of weirs and flumes. Stage measurement. Rating curves and other methods
• Groundwater occurrence: porosity, permeability, water holding formations, aquifers, aquicludes, aquifer types, aquifer boundaries, springs and streams in relation to groundwater
• Aquifer properties: transmissivity, storage coefficient, significance and typical magnitudes of these properties
• Groundwater movement: flow lines and equipotentials, natural flow, recharge, flow to wells, drawdown, cone of influence, radius of influence, interference
• Pumping tests: aquifer and well tests, conduct, measurement of variables, precautions
• Pumping test analysis: Theis and Jacob approaches, well efficiency. Dupuit-Forchheimer and Theis assumptions, deviations from these, and alternative methods
• Groundwater recharge: processes, main methods of estimation.