Hydrology of Catchments, Rivers and Landscapes

Purpose:

Water is the basis for life and ultimately the reason why ecosystems but also our society could develop the way they did. The availability and distribution of water supports the Earth’s ecosystem as well as our demands for drinking water, food, energy, industrial production, transport and recreation. However, due to its unpredictable nature, water is also recognized as the most important environmental hazard world-wide; floods, droughts and water-borne pollution cause thousands of casualties, significant disruption and damages worth billions of euro every year. Population pressure and climate change do not only dictate a more sustainable use of the limited resource water but also require improved protection of individuals as well as increased resilience of society as a whole against water-driven hazards.

Water is therefore a key element of almost all United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Hydrology describes the water storage in, movement through and release from terrestrial systems. As a result, knowledge on how the water system behaves is essential for understanding how societies interact with their natural resources. In this course, we provide the tools to help us analyse and understand these interactions as a foundation for interventions aimed at making society safe, healthy, productive and fair, in a way that the natural resources remain accessible and usable for future generations.

More specifically this course will address water resources issues related to:

- Floods

- Droughts

- Water for society, food and the environment

Contents of lectures

Terrestrial hydrology as continuum

1. Catchment Functioning, Macro-Scale Laws and Change

The water balance; the importance of processes at multiple spatial and temporal scales; controls of water movement

2. Formation and forms of precipitation:

Rainfall mechanisms; extreme rainfall; intensity-duration relationships;

3. Vegetation Processes and Change:

The role, functioning and relevance of vegetation in the terrestrial water cycle and the effect of global change on that

4. Flood Processes, Risk and Change

The concept of risk and methods for flood routing and to assess flood risk; influence of global change on global flood risk; flood frequency analysis

5. Drought Processes, Risk and Change

Definition of drought; different drought concepts and drought indicators as well as the effect of global change on drought pattern

6. Cold Region Processes and Change

The relevance of snow and ice processes for the water cycle; processes of snow accumulation/depletion; effect of global change on snow and ice