Foreseen Schedule (up to Easter)
(boldface dates are those with definitive material, I or directly written in Italian in for Italian, unspecified for English. All slides are in English)
To understand better what is below:
- A storyboard is a summary, usually in Italian, of the lecture
- A whiteboard is an explanation of a particular topic made on the whiteboard (using Notability on the iPad) usually in Italian
- Slides are commented in English (since 2021)
- Additional information (only for the brave or the curious) and references are in italics
2022-02-24 - I - Syllabus - Introduction 2 Hydrological Modelling
Here I introduced the class. Its learning by doing philosophy (altered by the necessity due to COVID-19 times that impose to do first the all the theoretical parts and subsequently all the practical parts hoping that they can be done in presence). 2022-02-25 and 2022-03-03- Geomorphometry - I - Discussion of previous lesson topics. Summary of the lecture in Italian. (This will be always done, each lesson, but for now on omitted). The rational of introducing these concepts is that catchments are spatially extended and in this course we are interested to deal with catchments hydrology.
In this first part we deal with the geometrical (differential) characteristics of the topography. Elevations, slopes, curvatures. They will be necessary later to extract the river network and the parts of a catchment.
In this class we define also what the drainage directions are and how they are computed in the case of DEMs (a topography discretized over a regular grid). From drainage directions are determined the total contributing areas in each point of a DEM. These two characteristics are eventually used to determine the channels head and extract the river network. In turn, the extraction of the channel network allows for the extraction of hillslope and a first definition of the Hydrologic Response Units (HRU).
- The basics of DEM analysis (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 (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 (Vimeo2022)
- A brief overview about geomorphic laws regarding the river networks and catchments (Vimeo2022).
- Additional information and references
- Part of the above but presented in a different way. Topological classification of catchments elements:
- 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
2022-03-10 - 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.
2022-03-17 - Interpolations part II.
In this class we try to understand how to estimate the errors over the estimates. Besides we introduce a method (the Normal Score) to avoid to obtain negative values when positive interpolated values are required.
- 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
2022-03-17 - Hydrological Models. This is a class about hydrological models, so what are they ?
The title is self-explanatory. A theoretical approach to modelling is necessary because we have to frame properly our action when we jump from the laws of physics to the laws of hydrology. Making hydrology we do not have to forget physics but for getting usable models we have to do appropriate simplifications and distorsions. The type of model we will use in the course are those in the tradition are called lumped models. Here we also introduce a graphical tool to represent these models.2022-03-17 - Hydrological Models
2022-03-18 - Hydrological Models - II
2022-03-24 - Linear Models for HRUs
Once we have grasped the main general (and generic) ideas, we try to draw the simplest systems. They turn out to be analytically solvable, and we derive their solutions carefully. From the group of linear systems springs out the Nash model, whose derivation is performed. Obviously, it remains the problem to understand how much the models can describe "reality". However, this an issue we leave for future investigations.
2022-03-25 -
A little more on the IUH and looking at the variety of HDSys models
We introduced previously without very much digging into it the concept of Instantaneous Unit Hydrograph. Here we explain more deeply its properties, Then we observe that there are issues related to the partition of fluxes and we discuss some simple models for obtaining them. Not rocket science here. The concept that we need those tools is more important than the tools themselves. We also observe that linearity is not satisfactory and we give a reference to many non linear models. Finally we discuss an implementation of some of the discussed concepts in the System GEOframe.
2022-03-31
2022-04-07
Travel Time, Residence Time and Response Time- Here below we started a little series of lectures about a statistical way of seeing water movements in catchments. This view has a long history but recently had a closure with the work of Rinaldo, Botter and coworkers. Here it is presented an alternative vie to their concepts. Some passages could be of some difficulty but the gain in understanding the processes of fluxes formation at catchment scale is, in my view, of great value and deserves some effort. The way of thinking is the following: a) the overall catchments fluxes are the sum of the movements of many small water volumes (molecules); b) the water of molecules can be seen through 3 distributions: the travel time distribution, the residence time distribution and the response time distributions; c) the relationships between these distributions are revealed; d) the relation of these distributions with the the treatment of the catchments made through ordinary differential equations is obtained through the definition of age ranked distributions; e) The theory this developed is a generalizations of the unit hydrograph theory.
- The view of the catchment as the statistics of elementary water volumes moving stochastically, a storyboard
- Travel Time, Residence Times (Vimeo2022)
2021-04 -08
Some References (advanced)
2022-04-08 - After all radiation moves it all.
- Radiation (YouTube 2017).
- 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.
So what ? - Steps in hydrological modelling with integrated distributed models
2022-05-19 - Seminar by Ing. Mar co Bezzi, Ph.D., Safe Waters 4 Agricolture (
Vimeo2022)
2022-06-08 - Seminar by Ing. Matteo Dall'Amico, Ph.D., How to work with Hydrology and Earth Observations (
Vimeo 2022)
