Legendary fluvial geomorphologist Reds Wolman once said “Floods come from too much water,” and that’s the phenomenon distilled to its core essence. But this bit of wisdom doesn’t give us much to go on if we want to understand what creates floods or why some areas are more flood-prone than …
In Watershed Hydrology, we’ve been talking about soil moisture and water potential in relation to evaporation and infiltration. An important concept is the idea of the unsaturated zone, where the pores (or open spaces) in the soil, sediment or rock are not completely filled with water most of the time. …
Evapotranspiration is often said to be the most difficult water balance component to directly measure. When water goes from liquid to vapor, you can’t exactly catch it in a bucket or measure flow in a channel. Last week in class, we used a very simplified version of the weighing lysimeter to …
As California’s drought continues and intensifies, groundwater is ever more heavily exploited. Groundwater withdrawals are happening much faster than natural recharge will ever occur, and the consequences can literally move the ground beneath your feet. This video from the USGS is a nice explainer: For more on California’s climate and …
If you haven’t seen it yet, and you are at all interested in dams and dam removal (or are even wondering why people would be interested in dam removal), I encourage you to watch the film Damnation. The film highlights some of the environmental issues associated with dams, showcases the …
Radar is increasingly used to measure precipitation in hydrologic science applications. It’s handy because it can be both frequent and areally distributed. This NWS newsletter does a great job of going over the basics of how weather radar can be used to derive rainfall rates and totals. This page gives a …
Cross-posted at Highly Allochthonous This summer we were treated to not one but two dam removals on the Cuyahoga River, ~10 miles downstream from Kent. Those following me on twitter know that I obsessed about these removals all summer long, first as they were delayed by weeks of high water, …
So much stuff going on here, I haven’t even had time to update since the end of the semester. But when I saw this video flit across my Twitter feed today (via @volcanojw), I slowed down to watch it and then had to share it. Someday I’ll get to Hawai’i …
Here’s a nice EPA video highlighting the work being done by Bill Shuster and other EPA scientists on the connections between green infrastructure, watershed scale stormwater management, and combined sewer overflows. We’ve been reading and talking about some of this work in Urban Hydrology.
I’m still super excited about Lost Rivers showing in Kent tonight, but there are many other great films at the Environmental Film Festival as well. This short from Jessica Yu, director of Last Call at the Oasis is fantastic: Meet Mr. Toilet | Jessica Yu from Focus Forward Films on …