Water Balance

why is hydrology important

• Helps us know how much water is available in rivers, lakes, groundwater, and reservoirs.

• Supports drinking water management, agriculture, and industry.

• Predicts when and where floods might occur to reduce risks to people and infrastructure.

• Tracks drought patterns to prepare for water shortages.

• Guides the design of dams, stormwater systems, irrigation, and urban drainage.

• Prevents costly failures by predicting water flow and storage.

• hydrology is important because water controls life, landscapes, hazards, and resources—and without understanding it, we can’t manage our environment or societies sustainably.

Watershed

area of land that contributes water and sediment to a given point or body of water

What watershed are we in

Rocky river

Drainage divide

boundary of a watershed

HUC(Hydrologic Unit Code)

numerical way to represent watershed

oxbow lake

lake that forms in the bend of river where river no longer flows

first to be deposited when moving from high to low velocity

coarse grained

what is a floodplain

A flat area adjacent to the river carved out by rivers

why is it important to identify the location of a floodplain

- if you live in a floodplain you pay higher insurance rates

- building infrastructure: soil stability, soil erosion

banks of flood plain act as

natural levees

levee

-highest elevation of floodplain

- sed. deposited near the channel edges

- restrict conductivity

As surface area increases so does the potential to _______and hold __________

attract and hold water

HUC 2

04 Great Lakes 

All watersheds in the Great Lakes region will start with

04

HUC6

041100

• 0411 Lake Erie(subregion)

• 041100 Southeren Lake Erie (basin)

water balance equation

inputs - outputs = storage

How Watersheds help us assess pollution

• lets us know where its going

• how much we need to dilute it

inputs

• precipitation*

• runoff*

• groundwater

• people *

outputs

• runoff

• evaporation

• transpiration(plants)

• groundwater

• people

storage

• reservoirs

• into Ground(soil moisture)

  • GW

Storage has a 

finite capacity

Difficult to measure

• G.W

• transpiration

• evaporation

Water balance use

can be used to estimate a missing component