Thr third thesis-poster presents Marco Feltrin's study on evapotranspirative fluxes in grapevines by integrating the GEOSPACE ecohydrological model with WiseConn sensor technology (dr. Marco Bezzi). The research compares two rainfall scenarios: a wet scenario (1147 mm of total precipitation) and a dry scenario (682.4 mm of total precipitation) to evaluate plant water stress. Using the one-dimensional GEOSPACE model with data from a vineyard near Verona, results show that the dry scenario led to half the plant transpiration during summer months. The model effectively demonstrates how water content throughout the soil column affects water stress in plants, with practical applications for irrigation management, water conservation, and predicting water availability for viticulture under changing climate conditions. The high resoltion poster can be found by clicking on the Figure below.
My reflections and notes about hydrology and being a hydrologist in academia. The daily evolution of my work. Especially for my students, but also for anyone with the patience to read them.
Friday, February 28, 2025
Three Batchelor Graduation Works
Thursday, February 6, 2025
The Hydrological Modeling 2025 class
Welcome to the 2025 Hydrological Modeling Class!
To better understand the materials provided:
- Storyboards – Summaries of the lectures, usually in Italian.
- Whiteboards – Explanations of specific topics, presented on a whiteboard using Notability on an iPad.
- Slides – Commented in English (available since 2021).
- Videos – Recorded during lectures to complement the slides, with no editing (as post-production would be too time-consuming).
- 2025 videos are available on a [Vimeo Showcase] (link here).
- Additional information & references – Marked in italics, for the curious and the brave who want to explore further.
📅 24 February 2025 – Part I
Syllabus & Introduction to Hydrological Modeling
In this session, I introduced the course and its learning-by-doing philosophy. We cover all theoretical concepts first, followed by the practical applications (with Professor Giuseppe Formetta).
To begin is also worth to have a little (philosophical) analysis of what a model is. This is what done in the following parte of the lecture
📅 25 February 2025 – Geomorphometry
This session begins with a discussion of previous lesson topics and the rationale behind introducing geomorphometric concepts. Since catchments are spatially extended, understanding their geometry is essential for studying catchment hydrology.
In the first part, we focus on the geometrical and differential characteristics of topography, including:
- Elevation
- Slope
- Curvature
These parameters are fundamental for extracting the river network and identifying different parts of a catchment.
We then define drainage directions and explore how they are computed using Digital Elevation Models (DEMs)—where topography is discretized on a regular grid. From these drainage directions, we determine the total contributing area at each point of a DEM.
These two key characteristics allow us to:
- Identify channel heads and extract the river network.
- Define hillslopes and establish an initial framework for Hydrologic Response Units (HRUs).
- Introduction to Geomorphometry I:
- The basics of DEM analysis (All the differential geometry-derived quantities)
- Elevation, Slopes, (Vimeo2025)
- Curvatures (Vimeo2025)
- Old videos: Vimeo 2024, Vimeo 2024, Vimeo 2023 - Part I, Vimeo_2023-Part II, Vimeo 2023 Curvatures) Vimeo 2022 part I, Vimeo 2022, part II, Vimeo2021, YouTube video 2019,YouTube2020, Sintesi in Italiano 2020
- Hydrogeomorphology: the derived quantities, drainage directions and contributing areas (Vimeo2025)
- (Vimeo2024, Vimeo 2023, Vimeo 2022, Vimeo2021, YouTube video 2019,YouTube2020, Sintesi in Italiano 2020)
- On the estimation of tangential stresses in a curved topography (Whiteboard 2020)
- References for who wants to go deeper
- Peckham, R. J., and G. Jordan. 2007. Digital Terrain Modelling: Development and Applications in a Policy Support Environment. Edited by Robert Joseph Peckham and Gyozo Jordan. New York: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. Lecture Notes In Geoinformation and Cartography.
- A Storyboard Italian regarding the geomorphic laws
- Where do channels begin: Extracting channels and hillslope (Vimeo2025)
- (Vimeo 2024, Vimeo2022, Vimeo 2023)
- Old classes: YouTubeVideo 2020 b, Sintesi in Italiano 2020
- Old a little different but useful material: extracting the hillslope (YouTube Video 2019,YouTube2020)
- Channel heads move (Vimeo 2024)
📅 3 March 2025
- A brief overview about geomorphic laws regarding the river networks and catchments (Vimeo2025).
- Old Classes: Vimeo 2021, Vimeo2022,Vimeo 2024
- Additional information and references
- Part of the above but presented in a different way. Topological classification of catchments elements:
- Horton-Strahler Ordering (Whiteboard2020);
- Pfafstetter (Whiteboard2020; an alternative presentation here) and
- other ordering schemes (Whiteboard 2020 here).
- Rigon, Riccardo, Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe, Amos Maritan, Achille Giacometti, David G. Tarboton, and Andrea Rinaldo. 1996. “On Hack’s Law.” Water Resources Research 32 (11): 3367–74.
- Detecting the human landscape (please try to read and summarize the main concepts): Cao, Wenfang, Giulia Sofia, and Paolo Tarolli. 2020. “Geomorphometric Characterisation of Natural and Anthropogenic Land Covers.” Progress in Earth and Planetary Science 7 (1): 2.
- Other references:
- Older classes in Italian
- Geomorphology with References
- Various information from the AboutHydrology Blog
- R.Rigon, E. Ghesla, C. Tiso and A. Cozzini, The Horton Machine, pg. viii, 136, ISBN 10:88-8443-147-6, University of Trento, 2006
- W. Abera, A. Antonello, S. Franceschi, G. Formetta, R Rigon , "The uDig Spatial Toolbox for hydro-geomorphic analysis" in Geomorphological Techniques, v. 4, n. 1 (2014), p. 1-19
- Getting the sense of what we are doing (Vimeo2025, Vimeo2022)
- Hydrological data (Storyboard2020 in Italian)
- To which data are we interested in and where can we find them ? (In English)
- Ground data and their interpolation (Vimeo2025)
- Vimeo2024, Vimeo2022, Vimeo 2021, Zoom2020
- Thiessen Polygons (Storyboard2020 in Italian)
- Inverse distance Weighting (Storyboard 2020 in Italian)
- Introduction to Kriging Theory:
- Summary (Vimeo2025)
- Vimeo 2021, Vimeo2022, Vimeo2024
- Building the system to solve ( Storyboard 2020),
- the Kriging's equations (Vimeo2025)
- YouTube2019, Vimeo 2021, YouTube2020, Zoom2020, Vimeo2022, Vimeo2023, Vimeo2024 part1, Vimeo2024 part
📅 10 March 2025
- Catching the errors of estimates (Vimeo2025)
- Flow chart and Various types of Kriging (Vimeo2024)
- The Normal score (Vimeo2023)
- Some tools available in OMS3 (Vimeo2022)
- Additional material:
- References:
- Marialaura Bancheri, Francesco Serafin, Michele Bottazzi, Wuletawu Abera, Giuseppe Formetta, and Riccardo Rigon, The design, deployment, and testing of kriging models in GEOframe with SIK-0.9.8, Geosci. Model Dev., 11, 2189–2207, 2018 https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-2189-2018
- Andràs Bardossy, Introduction to Geostatistics, year unknown.
- Goovaerts, P. (1997). Geostatistics for Natural Resources Evaluation (pp. 1–488). New York : Oxford University Press.
- P.K. Kitanidis, Introduction to GEOstatistics, 1997 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511626166
- Mitas, Lubos, and Helena Mitasova. 1999. “Spatial Interpolation.” Geographical Information Systems: Principles, Techniques, Management and Applications 1 (2). http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.224.5959&rep=rep1&type=pdf.
- G. Raspa, Dispense di Geostatistica Applicata, Università di Roma 3, 2010
📅 17 March 2025
Hydrological Models- Catchment processes (Vimeo2025)
- Hydrological Models (Vimeo2025)
- Seven steps in hydrological modelling I: clarifying the purposes, geomorphology, pre-analysis of input data (Vimeo2025)
- Integral Distributed Model or Hydrological Dynamical Systems, HDSys (Vimeo2025)
- The representation of Hydrological Dynamical System (Vimeo2025)
- Seven steps in hydrological modelling II: setup, model calibration/execution/validation (Vimeo2025)
- Seven steps in hydrological modelling III: delivery the results, final deployment to stakeholders (Vimeo2025 - not recorded)
- DARTHs (Digital Twins of Earth System) (Vimeo2024)
- A new way to do models (Vimeo2024)
- A final view on Hydrological Dynamical Systems and their application to catchments.
- Hypothesis testing in Hydrological Modelling with HDSys (At the whiteboard)
- Further readings:
📅 25 March 2025
- The very simplest linear system (Vimeo2025)
- Vimeo 2022, Vimeo2021 , Vimeo2023, Vimeo2024
- Derivation of the solution of the linear reservoir (Blackboard2024)
- Same derivation as above but from a different source and treated in a general way
- Getting new features to the linear systems (Vimeo2025)
- Vimeo 2022, Vimeo2021, Vimeo2023, Vimeo2024
- Integrating the linear system on the blackboard (Vimeo2025)
- Summarizing the previous class results at the blackboard (Vimeo2022)
- The Nash model (Vimeo2025)
- A trick for doing the double integration in the Nash Hydrograph derivation (Blackboard 2024, Blackboard2023, Blackboard2022, Vimeo Whiteboard 2021)
- The S-function (Blackboard2024)
📅 31 March 2025
- Summarizing the previous class (Vimeo2022)
- The issue of runoff generation
- the Hymod model (Vimeo2025)
- ERM-I (Vimeo2025)
- Vimeo2024 ,Vimeo2023, Vime2022
- In Italian: Vimeo2021-I, Vimeo2021-II
📅 7 April 2025
- A summary of previous lectures
- ERM-II (Vimeo2025)
- Vimeo2024, Vimeo2023, Vime2022
- In Italian: Vimeo2021-I, Vimeo2021-II
- Simplified snow models (Vimeo2025)
- MaRRmot survey of models (Vimeo2025)
- A little about models calibration (Vimeo2024)
- Notes about models validation (Vimeo2024)
- Additional material
- The view of the catchment as the statistics of elementary water volumes moving stochastically, a storyboard
- Travel Time, Residence Times (Vimeo2024)
- A summary (Vimeo 2022)
- A short note about past and future (Vimeo2022)
- Vimeo 2021-Ita, Vimeo 2021-Eng, Vimeo2022
- Some discussion (In English)
- Previous lesson recap - Blackboard2024
- StorAge Selection Functions (Vimeo2024)
- (Blackboard2024 -1, Blackboard2024 -2)
- Response time and Life Expectancy (Vimeo2024)
- Niemi's identity (Vimeo2024)
- Multiple Reservoirs (Vimeo2024)
- Partitions (Vimeo2024)
- Pollutants and Tracers (Vimeo2024)
- Q&A - A student asks and I respond on travel times (in Italian)
- Q&A - Another session of explanations
- Klicker session on Travel times, Residence Time, etc. (List of questions and answers by students, Zoom2020)
- More material on travel time, residence time and response time on this blog.
- Old material on the same topic
- Response Times (Vimeo 2023)
- Vimeo2020
- Vimeo 2021-Eng, Vimeo 2021-It
- A little of discussion (in English)
- Pollutants, Tracers, Nutrients Transport (Vimeo2023)
- (Vimeo2022)
- Partitioning the outputs (Vimeo2023)
- (Vimeo2022)
- Rigon, R., M. Bancheri, and T. R. Green. 2016. “Age-Ranked Hydrological Budgets and a Travel Time Description of Catchment Hydrology.” Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/20/4929/2016/.
- Rigon, Riccardo, and Marialaura Bancheri. 2021. “On the Relations between the Hydrological Dynamical Systems of Water Budget, Travel Time, Response Time and Tracer Concentrations.” Hydrological Processes 35 (1). https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.14007.
- More References in slides
Digressions II - Radiation - After all radiation moves it all.
- Radiation (YouTube 2017).
- The Sun (YouTube 2017)
- Stefan-Boltzmann law and radiation spectrum (YouTube 2017, Vimeo2021)
- Sun to Earth (YouTube 2017)
- Coping with latitude and longitude (YouTube 2017,Vimeo2021)
- Atmospheric Absorptions (YouTube 2017,Vimeo2021)
- Clouds (YouTube 2017,Vimeo2021)
- Coping with terrain (YouTube 2017,Vimeo2021)
- Long wave radiation (YouTube 2017, Vimeo2021)
- Table of symbols
- Readings:
- Corripio, J. G. (2002). Modelling the energy balance of high altitude glacierised basins in the Central Andes. Ph.D Dissertation, 1–175.
- Corripio, J. G. (2003). Vectorial algebra algorithms for calculating terrain parameters from DEMs and solar radiation modelling in mountainous terrain. Int. J. Geographical Information Science, 17(1), 1–23.
- Formetta, G., Rigon, R., Chávez, J. L., & David O. (2013). Modeling shortwave solar radiation using the JGrass-NewAge system. Geoscientific Model Development, 6(4), 915–928. http://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-6-915-2013
- Formetta, G., Bancheri, M., David, O., & Rigon, R. (2016). Performance of site-specific parameterizations of longwave radiation. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 20(11), 4641–4654. http://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-4641-2016
- Various material from the AboutHydrology blog
- Q&A - Some questions on radiation, your answers and my comments.
- An unexpected candid way (for naive people like me) to model Covid-19 spreading (Whiteboard2020, Zoom2020)
- But look how it is a more informed model s.
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
The Hydrology Class Lab 2025
The lab component makes up nearly half of the course, following the motto:
"Learning by doing."
Throughout the lab, you will conduct at least three key numerical experiments:
- Time Series Analysis – Exploring various data elaborations with various Jupyter Notebooks and a little of Python
- Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) Curves – Estimating rainfall intensity over different time scales with various Jupyter Notebooks and a little of Python, as well
- Infiltration Experiments – Investigating soil absorption dynamics using the WHETGEO system
- Evaporation & Transpiration Experiments – Understanding water loss processes in different conditions using the GEOSPACE ssytem
Resources
🔹[Vimeo Showcase – General Lab Videos]
🔹[OSF Repository – Lab Materials]
📌 Detailed videos and materials for each experiment are listed below.
2025-03-03 Introduction to working with Jupyter and Notebooks
- A little introduction to Jupyter Notebook by Concetta D'Amato (YouTube2020, Data).
- A little of introduction
- Elementary operations
- Vimeo2025
- Vimeo2024 part1
- Vimeo2024 part2
- Reading a CSV file with PANDAS
- The Class Notebook I
- Vimeo2025 part1
- Vimeo2025 part 2
- Pluviometria Paperopoli
- Notebook
- Vimeo2024, Vimeo2023, Vimeo2022, Vimeo2021, YouTubeLive 2019, YouTubeVideo2020
- Reading an Excel File
- The Class Notebook II
- Vimeo2025
- (Vimeo2024, Vimeo 2023)
- Data
- Notebook
- Reading a timeseries of daily rainfall organized in a Table whose rows contains the days and columns different years
- Data (Daily Precipitation od San Martino di Castrozza from 1921 to 1990)
- Notebooks:
- Same thing as above (Vimeo2022)
- Chat GPT use suggestions (Vimeo2024)
- Other ChatGPT suggestions (Vimeo2024)
- Grouping the data by year (Vimeo 2022)
- A better plot of the time series
- Monthly mean precipitation (Vimeo2022)
- Same data as above but with some modified notebooks
- with using the mean and the variance (Notebook, Vimeo2025, Vimeo2024, Vimeo2023)
- with the maximum likelihood (Notebook, Vimeo2025 I, Vimeo2025 II, Vimeo2024, Vimeo2023)
- with the minimum square methods (Notebook, Vimeo2025 ,Vimeo2024, Vimeo2023)
- Il test di Pearson (Notebook, Vimeo2025, Vimeo2024, Vimeo 2023)
- Finally interpolating the curves (Notebook, Vimeo2024, Vimeo2023)
The Hydrology class 2025
The Hydrology 2025 Course will be 90% similar to last year's class, with only minor modifications. You can find details about the tools used and other relevant information in the 2023 Index (a quick 3-minute read).This page provides access to course materials, including slides, videos (both old and new), and other resources.
Hydrology is a fascinating field because water is essential for life and human activities. It is fundamentally the Physics of the Hydrological Cycle, yet it is deeply interconnected with biochemical processes and geology due to water's crucial role in ecosystems. Here a brief introduction from a National Geographics post. A companion page is available for the laboratory exercises, where you can find all the necessary materials for hands-on practice.
Classes and Related Materials
Available Resources
- Storyboards – A summary of the lecture, usually in Italian.
- Whiteboard – A detailed explanation of a specific topic, presented using Notability on an iPad.
- Slides – Commented in English.
- Videos – Commentary on the slides, typically recorded during lectures with no editing (as post-production would be too time-consuming).
- 2025 Videos are available on a Vimeo Showcase [link here].
- Additional Information & References – For those eager to explore more, supplementary details and references are provided in italics.
Class Schedule & Materials
📅 24 February 2025 – Introduction to the Course and Hydrology
- Syllabus (Vimeo 2025)
- (Vimeo 2024), Vimeo2023, Vimeo 2021);
- A very short introduction to hydrology (Vimeo 2025)
- Mass & Energy budgets (Vimeo 2025)
- A short Lab introductions. Go to the installation page or (look at here for a short video summary)
- 🔎 Complementary Reference:
- Blöschl, Günter. 2022. Flood Generation: Process Patterns from the Raindrop to the Ocean. DOI: 10.5194/hess-2022-2.
📅 25 February 2025 – Ground-Based Precipitation and Its Statistics
📌 Topic: Understanding precipitation distribution, intensity, and extreme events—essential for engineering applications.
- The storyboard of the lecture (on Vimeo)
- A general overview (Vimeo 2025)
- Separation rainfall-snowfall (optional)
- Statistics of ground precipitations (Vimeo 2025 part I, Vimeo 2025 part II)
- Vimeo2024 I, Vimeo 2024 II, YouTube2019, YouTube2020, Vimeo 2021, Vimeo2022 Vimeo2023