Surface Water Hydrology

Professor Rajib Maity

Department of Civil Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur
Lecture 01
Introduction
Hello students, welcome to this course, Surface Water Hydrology.

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This course is designed in such a way that undergraduate students will find it very useful and
the students who wants to do some specialization and research on the related fields, related to
water and water crisis will find this one useful. This course is also designed in such a way
that the practitioners will find it useful to solve some field-scale problems.

In this very first lecture, we will be talking something about the introduction of the entire
course, entire course outline and to start with myself, Dr. Rajib Maity. I am from Indian
Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, Department of Civil Engineering. You can see my email
ID is here, at the end, it is written. So, at any point of time you have any query about the
content of this course, you can definitely connect to me.
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So, in this very first lecture, these are the concepts that I will cover. The first one is
introduction to hydrology and water resource. This is important! This will help us to develop
the motivation why we need this particular course, and in the current context, why this study
related to water is very, very important given the context of this climate change that you
might be hearing now in different media and resources.

The second thing that I will discuss about is the distribution of water on earth, and of course
it will go to the global hydrologic cycle. Some parts will be taken in the next lecture as well.

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If I come to the outline of this course, so the overall outline of the course that we will be
discussed in this very first lecture itself. You will see that there are total three modules:
introduction, then analysis, and design. All three things will be covered. I will discuss one by
one. Then, I will come to the overall introduction, then as I told in the concept covered, one
of the most important thing, how the water is distributed across the earth, and of course, over
the time, then the global hydrologic cycle, and finally, the concluding remarks from this
discussion.

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Now, this is the overall outline of this course. There are mainly three modules are there. In
the first module, we will discuss about hydrological processes. In the second module, which
is one of the major components of this course that is hydrological analysis and the third one
deals with the hydrological design. So, as you can see that it goes in a flow where we need
the background knowledge to proceed one after another.

So, in the hydrological processes, in the very first module, we will be discussing mainly:
what is hydrological cycle? And, most importantly, how this is creating the backbone for the
surface water hydrology. And, why and what are the recent changes with respect to the
climate change. These are the major focuses that will be included in the first module.

Second module, as you can see here, it spans from week 2 to week 9, where different
analyses related to surface water hydrology will be discussed, and this knowledge will be
utilized in the third module, where we will be discussing some of the applications in
hydrological design.
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So, at the very first, we should know that what is hydrology. It is a science of the water that
deals with its occurrence, circulation, and distribution over the earth and its atmosphere. So,
this is a scientific area, where the entire system, connected through different interconnected
processes, that deals with different allied fields also. So, this is how we have to understand
the hydrological concept, if we really want to know the total process.

So, this basically involves water in all phases, at all possible places, e.g, the water in the
streams or lakes, rainfall or snowfall, glacier, or even the water beneath the earth surface and
the pores of the soils and rocks.

As you know, that our course title is surface water hydrology. So we will restrict our analysis
and design confined within the surface water only. But, of course, we cannot deny the other
two immediate neighbors of it: one is the atmosphere, other one is the subsurface water. So,
these will come now and then in our course as well.

We can now gradually move towards the overall structure of the course. As you can
understand that it is an interdisciplinary field of science, and it basically covers the different
other various allied fields. Those are climatology, as I told you that there is a change in this
field. Meteorology is another field. These are very much related to the hydrological
processes. Even the geology, the mathematical tools like statistics, fluid mechanics or even
when we talk about the water quality, the physics, chemistry, these are also coming into this
area. So, it is a truly interdisciplinary field of science.
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Next, as you may be knowing, that water exists on the earth in a space with uncertain varying
boundaries. What I mean is that it can be below the surface and it can be the above the
surface also. This is almost about, say 15 km above the surface in the atmosphere and almost
about one km below the ground. This entire area is known as hydrosphere. There are different
paths and processes through which the hydrologic cycle takes place which, of course, as I
told you, is the central focus of the hydrological science.

So, before we go deep into the hydrology, let us first have a general discussion on water and
its different aspects on the earth.

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Water as a resource on the earth, as you might be knowing already, is one of the primary
reason behind the life on the earth. It is the most abundant substance on the earth and
constitutes the principal portion in any living thing. So, it has also played the key role in the
progress of the human civilization from the ancient time. You might be knowing about Indus
valley civilization or ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia, the Chinese civilization. All these were
along some big river basins or river network, and these are some of the prominent examples
of the ancient river dependent civilization on the earth.

So, this pictorial presentation, you can see that sometimes we find water is very ‘beautiful’.
As you can see next, in the diagram, it is really ‘powerful’. It helps us to generate some
power, and which is definitely one of the sources of renewable energy. You may have heard
this term. Finally, sometimes it can be ‘destructive’ also that many of us have seen or heard
from different news and media, or even experienced as well. So, it can be beautiful, it can be
powerful, and it can be destructive.

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Thus, water it can be a blessing, or it can be a curse both. Considering water as a blessing, the
importance of the water on the earth can be understood from any of the aforementioned
ancient human civilizations. This is why the human beings thought that their civilization
should be in and around a river basin. The first thing is that it serves as the source of the
drinking water. It supplies the fertile sediments when it is considered for the agricultural
productivity. During the flood time, lots of sediment comes and this is highly fertile.
River networks help in transportation. Then, it is essential for industrial development. There
are many industries developed on the bank of the river to meet their need for water. Next,
there is hydropower generation also. So, this is just an indicative list. There are many more
that you can imagine when water can be considered as a blessing. So, it is truly speaking that
the water is always considered as a resource that makes the term the water resource.

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But, at the same time, it also creates some sort of curse, as there are many water related
problems that we know. Some of such problems can be natural, like the floods and droughts,
and some of these issues are the direct consequences of the human influences such as water
pollution, water-borne diseases etc. You can see some of the glimpse of the snapshots of
drought, flood, then water pollution, water-borne diseases.

The droughts, as you know, cause the shortage of the water and food. It causes a degradation
of the public health. It causes loss of the life too. From 1972 to 2012, it caused almost about
6,80,000 deaths as per the WMO record in 2014.

Regarding flood, it is opposite of the drought. During the flood, there is a plenty of
waterlogging and the overflow of the water. Drinking water gets polluted. It can destroy the
buildings/bridges, ruin the productive agricultural field, cause the loss of lives and cattle.

Considering water pollution, there are deaths of aquatic life, imbalance in the ecosystem. It
may spread water-borne diseases. It is of course aesthetically unpleasing. Moreover, water-
borne diseases, as we know, caused due to the industrial waste and human waste, garbage,
untreated sewage, chemical effluents. These sometimes are released without any basic
treatment to the nearby surface water sources, like rivers, lakes. It causes different water-
borne disease like cholera, typhoid, then diarrhoea, dysentery, polio and so on and so forth.

However, when we start, I told there are few things are natural and few things are due to the
direct influence of the human beings. But the question is that: Is there any human influence
behind the so called natural problems, such as floods and droughts? Because this is very
recent as compared to all other things that I discussed from the ancient era. Very recently, our
realization is that even for the floods and droughts, there are some indirect influences that
human beings are creating, and this is basically the manifestation of the climate change that
we will take up time to time during this course.

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So, this basic introduction forms the motivation why to study this particular course, surface
water hydrology. As you know, it is highly essential to understand the properties of the water,
its natural cycle, its role in the ecological balance, and the possible consequences on the
human interaction.

Secondly, this knowledge will help us to minimize the damage caused by the droughts and
floods etc., and to adopt proper water management strategies, if we know the different
processes that is involved within it.

Another major challenge in the 21st century, as I mentioned, is the climate change, which has
altered the regular spatio-temporal distribution of the water all across the earth. That means
whatever we know, in general, about its distribution, now, impact of climate change has
caused some sort of redistribution of water resources over space and time. So, that is very
much essential information for us to rethink about the management of the water that is
available to us. Last but not least, the adequate knowledge on the water resources will also
help us to foresee such future possible changes and to develop the useful mitigation and
adaption strategies to cope up.

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Coming to the next one, why to study this surface water hydrology? In a nutshell, there are
different practical applications of hydrology that can be found in many areas. Some of the
areas are listed here. It starts from design and operation of the hydraulic structures, water
supply networks, wastewater treatment and disposal, irrigation channels, drainage system,
hydropower generation, flood and drought control, then navigation, erosion and sediment
control, salinity control, pollution abatement, recreational use of water, fish and wildlife
protection, and finally the climate change adaptation and mitigation.

So, before proceeding further on the details about the surface water hydrology in the
subsequent weeks, this week we will build some preliminary concepts about the distribution
of the water resource on the earth, hydrological cycle, surface water resource of India, and
finally some discussions on the possible impact of changing climate on it. So, overall, this is
how the first week is designed.

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Coming to the summary of this very first lecture, this lecture is basically covered the overall
outline of the course on how we will proceed. Secondly, the different practical applications,
particularly for the practitioners, those who are working in the different field related problems
related to hydrology, in the various fields of applications. These are just mentioned.

The importance of the surface water hydrology in the context of its impact on society and
ecosystem is stressed upon, and an idea about the possible adverse impacts of changing
climate on the water resource is conveyed. It will be of course discussed again in details later
in this course. Thank you.