HYDROLOGY

The course belong to the "Natural capital and ecosystem services" curriculum and aims at providing core hydrologic concepts to evaluate, manage and model superficial and subsuperficial (groundwater) water resources.
The course deals with the components of the hydrologic cycle including processes of precipitation, evaporation, transpiration, infiltration, ground-water flow, surface runoff and streamflow. Students learn about each physical hydrologic process, and then are introduced to both field and modeling methods to measure and estimate rates of each process and how the results are applied in real-world situations for the management and evaluation of water resources. Exercises include problem-solving activities, data analysis.

- Define, explain and correctly use terms and concepts used to describe basic physical hydrologic processes including evaporation, transpiration, precipitation, infiltration, ground-water flow and surface runoff;
- Explain the hydrologic cycle and the ways that humans impact and interact with it;
- Solve basic hydrologic problems to estimate the magnitude and frequency of hydrologic events;
- Use basic accepted hydrologic modeling to quantitatively measure and estimate the role of physical processes in the hydrologic cycle;
- Evaluate flood risk;
- Compute minimum flow and ecological flow;
- Evaluate water resource management problems with awareness of the interdisciplinary nature of water resource management and decision-making;
- Read hydrologic research publications critically and discuss your thoughts;
- Write sound and clear exercise reports.

Calculus, including ordinary differential equations of degree one.
Basic concepts of fluid mechanics: pressure, hydrostatic pressure.

- Introduction. Hydrologic cycle. Hydrologic processes.
- Probability and statistics in hydrology. Return Period. Frequency analysis, risk.
- Precipitation: Types, variability, characterization.
- Evaporation and evapotranspiration.
- Infiltration, soil moisture dynamics.
- Surface hydrology: runoff and streamflow. Rainfall excess. Hydrologic response.
- Surface hydrology: Reservoir and streamflow routing.
- Subsurface hydrology: saturated flow in aquifers
- Floods controls and management.
- Fluvial ecosystems. Minimum and Environmental flow.

Exercise Sessions (in MatLab. Excel and Q-gis):
- Hydrological balance of a catchment (Matlab);
- Estimate of intensity-duration-frequency curve (Matlab);
- Computation of evapotraspiration and soil moisture dynamics (Excel);
- Uniform flow discharge rating curve (Excel);
- Dicharge computation through saline slug addition (Excel);
- River network extraction through digital terrain model analysis (Qgis).

Course material provided through the moodle online learning platform

Learning assessment is carried out through a written exam designed to test both the student’s ability to calculate relevant hydrological quantities and their knowledge of theoretical aspects of the discipline.
The final exam consists of three parts:

1) A practical exercise to be carried out on the student’s own laptop, where they may use the Matlab codes and Excel sheets developed during the exercises to solve a new problem (a short report on the QGIS exercise must be submitted before the exam).
2) Three numerical exercises aimed at assessing the student’s mastery of the calculation techniques covered during the course.
3) Four short questions focusing on theoretical aspects.

The written test may be followed by an oral examination (usually held on the same day as the written test), during which the written answers are reviewed and, if necessary, additional theoretical topics are discussed.

written and oral

11/33 points for practical exercise
13/33 points for exam exercises
9/33 points for exam open questions;

Learning assessments are designed to assign the following levels of knowledge and understanding:
- Grade 28-–30 cum laude: excellent knowledge of the subject and the ability to apply acquired knowledge and tools deductively to new problems not previously encountered.
- Grade 24-27: good knowledge of the subject and the ability to apply acquired knowledge and tools to problems similar to those already addressed.
- Grade 18-23: sufficient knowledge of the subject and the ability to apply acquired knowledge and tools to problems similar to those already addressed, with some conceptual and/or calculation inaccuracies.

- Front lectures.
- Exercise sessions in class.

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Natural capital and environmental quality" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development