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Friday, February 28, 2025
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
Q&A -
Interpolations
This lecture, assuming that now you have at least the concepts of what a catchment is and theoretically you know how to extract it and subdivide it in parts, deals with the data to feed catchments hydrology models. Because catchments have a spatial distribution, then also the driving data must be distributed. We need therefore methods of interpolation.
- 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:
Installations of the software can be found here, at this link.
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]
🔹[Theory and Concepts here]
📌 Detailed videos and materials for each experiment are listed below.
2023-02-24 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
- Vimeo2024
- Pluviometria Paperopoli
- Notebook
- Vimeo2023, Vimeo2022, Vimeo2021, YouTubeLive 2019, YouTubeVideo2020
- Reading an Excel File
- The Class Notebook II
- (Vimeo2024, Vimeo 2023)
- Data
- Notebook
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).
- 2024 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
📅 03 March 2025 - Statistics of extreme precipitations
📌 Topic: Understanding the extreme precipitation concept and distributions,
Some reviews on statistics - Return Period
- Whiteboard (2021) on statistics
- A little on exploratory statistics on the blackboard (2022)
- Whiteboard (2020) on Lognormal distribution
- Return period (Vimeo2025)
- On the difference among risk and hazard (rischio e pericolo) Whiteboard2021.
Extreme precipitations (Storyboard2020)
Distributions Storyboard2020
Extreme precipitations II
Beyond Gumbel- A review of the previous classes (Vimeo2023)
- Generalised extreme value distribution (Vimeo2024)
- Metastatistical Extreme Value (Vimeo2024)
- Following lesson storyboard (Whiteboard2024)
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