CVEN 4333: Engineering Hydrology
This undergraduate course is a main elective of CVEN students that want to learn about water, and a required class for EVEN students at CU Boulder.
I've taught the course in many Spring semesters since Spring 2014, with my offering moving to Fall starting in Fall 2023. I've collaborated on content with other instructors of the course over the years including Prof Ben Livneh and group alumnus Dr Jacob Kravitis.
Please read below for more information on the course, and feel free to contact me by e-mailing joseph.kasprzyk “at†colorado.edu for more information. Enrollment requirements are a pre-requisite course of Fluid Mechanics and a co-requisite course of Probability Statistics and Decision.
Course Description
Water is ubiquitous and forms the foundation for life on earth. It transports energy throughout the atmosphere regulating climate and climate change, carves and erodes the surface of the earth, and serves as one of our most precious and limited natural resources. The objective of this course is to provide an understanding of the complexity and importance of the movement, distribution, and quality of water, while emphasizing an application to engineering practices. The course studies engineering applications of principles of hydrology, including hydrologic cycle, rainfall and runoff, groundwater, storm frequency and duration studies, stream hydrography, flood frequency, and flood routing.
The course takes a scientific view of the hydrologic cycle including understanding of the mass balance of water on earth, what drives precipitation, and the various scenarios of infiltration in the near earth surface.
Teaching Elements
I use the in-class participation exercises to engage students within the course. The clicker questions include practice problems, concept reviews, and interesting facts about water. For example:
Which is true about hydrology on a global scale?
- Much more water evaporates from the land than falls to the land from precipitation
- More than 100 times more water is stored in ice and snow than in surface water storage (i.e., lakes)
- More than 100 times more water is stored in surface water sources (i.e., lakes) than in ice and snow.
- The largest storage of all water on earth is in groundwater
In lecture, I use a tablet computer to add annotations to lectures, and the basic lecture without annotations included is shared after class. By working practice problems and having interactive discussions, my goal is to have the students fully participate in their own learning, in classrooms that are large or small.
I'm adding more interactive web tools and demos to the course: