ENVIRONMENTAL HYDROLOGY SECOND EDITION

BOOK ORGANIZATION

The purpose of this book is to provide a qualitative understanding of hydrologic processes and an introduction to methods for quantifying hydrologic parameters and processes. It has been prepared for use in introductory hydrology courses taught at universities to students of environmental science, natural resources, geology, geography, agricultural engineering, and environmental engineering.



A comprehensive understanding of the presented topics and problems should provide sufficient knowledge for students to make an assessment of hydrologic processes associated with environmental systems and to develop initial conceptual evaluations that are part of most assessments. We hope that the book will also serve as a reference resource. 

In the problem sets and especially in the practical exercises (Chapter 14), we attempted to give students a “hands-on” feel for the matters at hand. Having actually dealt with data rather than simply having talked about it gives a better and more confident perspective. We also highly recommend attaining skills in surveying and field measurements, and some of the practical exercises require those skills. 

We believe it is important to be able to visualize a liter, a 1% slope, an acre-foot, or 10 ft3/sec. Readers will note that we frequently use English units of measure in this book. Although the rest of the world has converted to SI (International System of Units [Système international d’ unités], metric) units, most field level work in the U.S. is still done in English units. Moreover, the wealth of hydrologic data produced and held by the U.S. is mostly in English units. While most scientific journals use SI units, several U.S. scientific journals have switched back to English units so that published papers will have more applied impact. 

In any case, in the U.S., we need to know how to use and convert quickly between both systems. It is quite analogous to living in a bilingual nation. There, two languages must be spoken and understood; similarly, we must be bimensural or bimetric. Thus, we have made little effort to convert units and sometimes both systems are used in the same sentence. We believe that it will help prepare students for the real world, where they must deal with both systems, often under pressure, and where the ability to make mental conversions can provide a great advantage. 

All of the foregoing may be an unfortunate imposition, but it is a reality. By incorporating English units, we realize that we diminish this book’s marketability in countries outside the U.S., but not to incorporate English units, in our view, would be to abrogate our responsibilities as educators. A table of unit conversion factors is presented in Appendix A, and we urge students to learn the more salient ones. The topic of hydrology contains many different terms that may not be familiar to the reader. Therefore, we present a glossary of terms in Appendix B.

ENVIRONMENTAL HYDROLOGY SECOND EDITION