University of Miami

Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences

AMP515 - Environmental Hydrology

Course Outline and Lecture Schedule

Week  Agenda

  1. Introduction: overview of the hydrologic cycle; atmospheric, surface and subsurface water; water balance dynamics.

  2. Scope of environmental hydrology: inherent variability and the need for stochastic analysis; fundamentals of statistical hydrology.

  3. Principles of atmospheric water flow; rainfall, atmospheric humidity, vapor pressure, atmospheric stability and condensation; derived distribution of annual rainfall.

  4. Evaporation and transpiration: energy, mass transfer and combined methods; land surface-atmosphere feedback mechanisms.

  5. Surface runoff: equations of motion, simplifications; overland flow, runoff production and energy dissipation.

  6. Streamflow: generation and fluvial geomorphology; 3D structure of river basins.

  7. Erosion and sediment transport processes: threshold of movement, suspended load calculations, entrainment and total sediment load in surface water bodies.

  8. Infiltration and subsurface flow; infiltration estimation methods; rainfall-infiltration relationships, soil moisture movement and distribution.

  9. Introduction to groundwater flow: equations of motion; Darcy and Darcy-Brinkmann equations; one-dimensional flow models.

  10. Statistical and risk analysis in hydrology: return period, statistics of annual water balance and yield; hydrologic forecasting.

  11. Introduction to ecohydrology: climate, soil and vegetation; active role of ecosystems in hydrologic processes; ecosystem responses to hydrologic stress.

  12. Global change and global cycles: hydrologic species transport and fate processes; global cycling of carbon and nutrients.

  13. Special Topics I: Hydrology of  natural disasters; fundamentals of rainfall-triggered mud and debris flow; case study.

  14. Special topics II: Introduction to hydrologic modeling; an integrated approach to model surface and groundwater interactions; overview of numerical modeling tools.

Instructor

Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm
Tritium Laboratory, Office 8
Tel: 305-3614749
Email: fmiralles@rsmas.miami.edu

Course Schedule

TBA

Pre-requisite Coursework

Undergraduate fluid mechanics and background in differential equations preferred.

References

There is no required textbook for this class. Class notes and reference materials (papers, book chapters, handouts) will be distributed electronically and posted on the course's web site.

Grading

This course will be graded through five take home assignments (20 % each).

Office Hours

TBA