CE 3342 Water Resources

Engineering – Lecture 2
Introduction

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 Announcements
• Syllabus on Blackboard
• All materials covered in class are posted
on Blackboard
• TA – Mr. Ali Jozaghi,
[email protected]

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 Importance of water resources
engineering today
• A recent U.N. report states, “Overcoming the crisis in water
and sanitation is one of the greatest human development
challenges of the early 21st century.”
• The National Academy of Engineering identifies “Provide
access to clean water” and “Restore and improve urban
infrastructure,” of which water and sewer systems are a
large part, as two of the 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering.
• The National Research Council identifies “Hydrologic
Forecasting” as one of the eight Grand Challenges in
Environmental Sciences and recommends immediate
research investments in an initiative to develop the capability
for regional hydrologic forecasting.

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 In the context of DFW
• The National Resources Defense Council puts the DFW
region as having extreme risk for water sustainability under
climate change, and yet Dallas has the highest per-capita
water use in Texas.
• Over 95% of the water used in the Upper Trinity River Basin is
surface water. Given expected changes in global and regional
climate, more and more western cities can be expected to rely
on stored surface water (i.e. reservoirs) and reused water as
groundwater resources diminish.
• Coupled with the fastest-growing population in the U.S.
among the metropolitan areas, the region is in desperate
need for innovative science and technology solutions such as
smart urban water resources planning and management and
low-energy membrane technology for water filtration.
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From Dingman (2002)

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 What Hydrologists do?
• Hydrologists apply scientific knowledge
and mathematical principles to solve
water-related problems in society. They
are concerned with three issues:
- Water use (availability)
- Water control (quantity)
- Pollution control (quality)

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 Job titles
• Surface water hydrologist
• Hydrometeorologist (atmosphere)
• Geomorphologists (landforms)
• Hydrogeologists (groundwater)
• Glaciologists (glaciers)
• …

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 Careers in water resources
engineering
Federal agencies that hire hydrologists include:
• Army Corps of Engineers
• Bureau of Mines
• Bureau of Land Management
• Bureau of Reclamation
• Environmental Protection Agency
• Forest Service
• Geological Survey
• Natural Resources Conservation Service
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• NASA …

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 Careers in water resources
engineering
State and local government agencies
• Public health
• Water and sewage management
• Highway and land drainage
• Fish and wildlife
• Irrigation districts
• Environmental protection
• Conservation districts
• Colleges and universities

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 Careers in water resources
engineering
Private Sector
• Industries that develop the use large quantities of water
• Industries that have their own waste management
programs
• Water-well drilling and testing companies
• Resource development firm such as oil and gas
companies
• Electric power utilities
• Large developer firms
• Consulting firms
• Analytical laboratories specializing in water chemistry
• Nonprofit research organizations
• Self-employment
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 Engineering Hydrology
• Term hydrology means different things to
different professions.
• Engineering hydrologists or water resources
engineers, are involved in the planning, analysis,
design, construction and operation of projects
for the control, utilization and management of
water resources.
• They work in civil, environmental, agricultural,
hydraulic, irrigation and sanitary engineering.

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 Problems of Water Resources Eng. –
Studies Required
1. How much water is needed?
2. How much water can be expected?
3. Who may use the water?
4. What kind of water is it?
5. What structural problems exist?
6. Does project affect wild life or natural beauty?
7. Is the project economic?

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 Hydrologic Designs in Water
Resources Engineering

• Control of water : flood mitigation, land

drainage, sewerage, and highway culvert
design.
• Utilization of water for beneficial purposes:
water supply, irrigation, hydrolectric-power
development, and navigation
improvements.
• Water quality management

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Hydrologic Designs in Civil Eng.
• Transportation
- Drainage (roads, parking lots, airports, …)
- Culverts
- Bridges

• Construction
- Land development and construction
- Drainage (roofs, lots)
…

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 Hyper-resolution simulation of Harvey
flooding in Houston (from Noh et al. 2018)

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National Land Cover Database 2001
National Land Cover Database 2011
Changes in observed 20-yr return value of the daily accumulated precipitation (in.)
from 1948 to 2010 (Kunkel et al. 2013)

1 in

0.5 in

-0.5 in

-1 in
What drives the hydrologic cycle?

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From
Hornberger
et al. (1998)

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What drives the hydrolgic cycle?
• The dynamic processes of water vapor
formation and transport of vapor and liquid in
the atmosphere are driven largely by solar
energy
• Precipitation and the flow of water on and
beneath the Earth's surface are driven
primarily by gravity
• Within partially dry soil, gravitational and
other forces are responsible for the
movement of water
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Unlike the Richards’ eq,
Green-Ampt is a (vertically)
bulk representation of
infiltration.

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 Today’s concepts
• Water budget
• Runoff ratio
• Residence time

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 The water budget
• The hydrological cycle can be described quantitatively by applying
the principle of conservation of mass, which often is referred to as
a water balance or water budget
• A simple statement of conservation of mass for any particular
compartment (usually referred to as a control volume) is that the
time rate of change of mass stored within the compartment is equal
to the difference between the inflow rate and the outflow rate:

where
V = volume of water within the control volume [L3]
t = time [T]; I = inflow rate [L3 T-1]
O = outflow rate [L3 T-1]
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V

From
Hornberger
et al. (1998)

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The continental water budget

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 The continental water budget (cont.)
• Apply the principle of mass conservation, using the continents
as our control volume:
0 0 0
dV/dt = p + rsi+ rgi+ rso+ rgo+ et

where
V=volume of water stored
p=precipitation rate
rsi=surface water inflow rate
rgi=ground water inflow rate
rso=surface water outflow rate From
rgo=ground water outflow rate Hornberger
et al. (1998)
et=evapotranspiration

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 The continental water budget (cont.)

• Averaging over a long time period, we have:

1 T dV V (T )  V (0)
T 
0 dt
dt 
T


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The continental water budget (cont.)

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 𝑟𝑠ҧ
Runoff ratio =
𝑝ҧ

From
Hornberger
et al. (1998)

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 Residence time
• Tr [T], is a measure of how long, on average, a molecule of water
spends in that reservoir before moving on to another reservoir of the
hydrological cycle

• The residence time provides an indication of the time scales for

flushing a solute out of that particular reservoir

• Water in the oceans has a residence time approaching 3000 years,

while water in the atmosphere has a residence time of only 0.02
years or about 8 days; the residence time of water in rivers is 0.05
years or about 17 days (see Table 1.1)
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Residence time

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 Example calculation of residence time

Calculate the residence time of global atmospheric water. 35

End of slides

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