Hydrology (Topic1)
Hydrology (Topic1)
Hydrology (Topic1)
BASIC HYDROLOGY
By :
Engr. Halina Binti Hamid
DEFINITION OF HYDROLOGY
Hydrology means the science of water. Hydrology treats
all phases of water, their occurrence, circulation and
distribution, their chemical and physical properties and
their reaction with their environment including their
relation to living things.
Hydrology encompasses the full life history of water on
the earth. In a general sense Hydrology is a very broad
subject of an interdisciplinary nature drawing support from
allied sciences such as Meteorology, Geology, Statistics,
Chemistry, Physics and Fluid Mechanics.
There are two broad categories:
(1) Scientific Hydrology and
(2) Engineering/Applied Hydrology.
Engineering Hydrology includes those segments of the
field pertinent to planning, design and operation of
engineering projects for the control and use of water.
HYDROLOGY CYCLE
PROCESS OF HYDROLOGY CYCLE
Interception, or canopy
interception, refers to
precipitation that does not reach
the soil, but is instead
intercepted by the leaves and
branches of plants. It occurs in
the canopy, and in the forest
ground litter.
Because of evaporation,
interception of liquid water
generally leads to loss of that
precipitation for the drainage
basin, except for cases such as
fog interception
THE HYDROLOGIC CYCLE ON LAND
The amount of precipitation that soaks into the soil
depends on several factors:
The amount and intensity of the precipitation,
The prior condition of the soil,
The slope of the landscape,
The presence of vegetation.
These factors can interact in sometimes surprising ways -
a very intense rainfall onto very dry soil, typical of the
desert southwest, often will not soak into the ground at all,
creating flash-flood conditions.
Water that does soak in becomes available to plants.
Plants take up water through their root systems; the water
is then pulled up through all parts of the plant and
evaporates from the surface of the leaves, a process called
transpiration.
Water that soaks into the soil can also continue to
percolate down through the soil profile into groundwater
reservoirs, called aquifers. Aquifers are often mistakenly
visualized as great underground lakes; in reality,
groundwater fills the pore spaces within sediments or
rocks.
CATCHMENT AREA
An area contributing to flow at any given point
A system that changes rainfall (input) into discharge (output) in its outlet.
Sometime, it is called a drainage area bordered by ridge, saddle and hill; it
consists of such land uses as forest, plants, agriculture, bush, desert,
swamp, housing and others.
In USA, it is known as watershed
The factors considered in determination of a river catchment boundary
include river system (stream network), topography, and drainage outlet
point.
A system which is complex and heterogeneous consists of collection of
some sub systems. Each sub system is considered homogeneous, and
every sub system is determined by its physical character, where it can be
grouped as follows:
Where,
P Precipitation,
(primary input and the starting point in the analysis)
R Runoff;
G Groundwater;
E Evaporation;
T Transpiration.
All terms in equation have dimensions of volume but can be expressed as depth
over the catchment. Infiltration does not appear explicitly in the water budget
equation, because it is loss to runoff but a gain to groundwater system.
EXAMPLE :