• Describe the global and local water balance and quantify groundwater recharge from hydrographs
• • Explain in your own words the terms: groundwater, freshwater, water allocation, drought, water demand
  • Provide estimates of human water usage, global water reservoirs, water during historic droughts
  • Sketch the water cycle
  • Provide a water balance for a wathershed
  • Apply the concept of water balance to simple situations
  • Use the displacement and seasonal recession method to calculate groundwater recharge.
• Identify underground waters, describe the properties of aquifers and recall their classification
  • Define: zone of saturation, zone of aeration/unsaturated zone, water table, vadose zone, capillary fringe
  • Define: aquifer, aquitard/aquifuge, pore space, phreatic surface, root zone, confined/unconfined aquifer, piezometric surface, artesian aquifer, perched aquifers
  • Define porosity, derive its value in packed beds, Understand Grain size distribution and porosity, Understand the porosity of rock formations
  • Define storativity, elastic storage coefficient, specific yield, storage coefficient, specific retention, specific storage.
  • Draw piezometric maps from piezometer data
  • Find recharge and discharge zones from piezometric data
• Explain and apply Darcy's law
  • Provide and explain Newton's second law, Newton's second law applied to fluids and Stokes Equation.
  • Explain the difference between Darcy flux and water velocity.
  • Derive Darcy's law from first principles: Navier-Stokes to Stokes to Poiseuille to Darcy
  • Provide physical explanations of the hydraulic conductivity
• Derive the groundwater flow equations, apply their solutions to solve practical problems
  • Provide and explain Dupuit's equation.
  • Solve problems related to unconfined and confined aquifers.
  • Derive the Boussinesq equation.
  • Define transmissivity
  • Write the continuity equation for a leaky aquifer and provide an explanation for each parameter and variable as well as their units
  • Define transmissivity

Week 1: The Underground Water Cycle

We start with the description of groundwater as a resource: How much is there? Where is it? How do we use it?

• Importance of Groundwater
• Groundwater Use
• Water Cycle, Groundwater Availability
• Global Water Cycle
• Water Distribution
• Watershed Water Balance
• Groundwater Recharge from Hydrographs Analysis
• Recession Curve Displacement Method
• Seasonal Recession Method

Week 2: Aquifers

We describe underground waters and the properties and classification of aquifers. What is the difference between a confined and an unconfined aquifer? What is porosity and does it influence groundwater resources?

• Underground Water and Aquifer Types
• Lab Water in a Sand Box
• Underground Water and Aquifers
• WaterTtable, Piezometric Head and Potentiometric Surface Maps
• Review of Piezometric Head
• Potentiometric Surface Maps
• Porosity and Underground Matrix
• What is Porosity?
• Measuring Porosity
• Specific Yield, Specific Retention, Specific Storage, Storativity
• Specific Yield, Specific Retention
• Specific Storage and Storativity

Week 3: Darcy’s Law

We explain and apply Darcy’s law. This law describes flow in porous media and is the cornerstone of subsurface hydrology.

• Darcy the Engineer
• Darcy’s Law: An Empirical Law
• Permeameters
• Darcy Data and Hydraulic Conductivity
• Darcy’s Law: A Fundamental Law
• Physics Basics: Energy, Forces and Pressures = Einstein, Newton and
• Stokes and Poiseuille Law

Week 4: Groundwater Flow

We build up from Darcy’s law to derive the other principles of groundwater motion. What are the differences between confined and unconfined flows? What happens when it rains and aquifers recharge?

• Principles of Groundwater Flow
• Confined Flow
• Dupuit: Unconfined Flow
• Recharge and Divide
• Boussinesq Equation
• Leaky Confined

Week 5: Modeling and Applications

We introduce modeling principles to translate mathematical models into real-life engineering. How can we solve the equations of motion in excel? How can we design tile drains to lower the water table in a cornfield?

• K Charge
• Finite Difference Principles
• Finite Difference Application