Just some thoughts ... SORK Alptal

RR-event 310513 Irchel park

usual the drainage ditch next to the path through the Irchel park is empty today with >50 mm rain and wet pre conditions it changed to a small stream...

              

RR - in the region AWEL SITE

(Click to enter AWEL site)

Hydrology - doodle

Today Google celebrates the Earthday^*with a cool hydrology doodle

Hydro-cycle with precip

Hydro-cycle

*
Earth Day is an annual day on which events are held worldwide to demonstrate support for environmental protection. Earth Day is observed on April 22 each year. Earth Day is now coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network, and is celebrated in more than 192 countries every year.^{( source: Wikipedia )}

YoungHS

Just back from Europe's biggest geosciencse conference with most older hydrologist, some promotional work for the young with fresh ideas. From the younghs webiste:

“Dear reader,

Although this post is not strictly related to the main subject of the current post, we got prof. Montanari’s approval to share a message on this blog:

We would like to introduce you to an initiative to set up a network for young (aspiring) scientists in the field of hydrology. The latter is initiated by two M.Sc students that realized that there might be a lot of potential in increasing the involvement of young scientists by means of setting up a network. Examples of benefits could be:

- Stimulate bottom-up research initiatives, initiated by Ph.D/M.Sc peers, – Improve research opportunities and collaboration by creating an easy accessible network, – Stimulate awareness among young scientists about current and future research topics.

For this reason we have decided to explore the possibility to start up a network, the EGU-HS Young Hydrologist Society. The first meeting of the initiative is planned during the EGU General Assembly 2013 in Vienna. This meeting will be an interactive session where we want to discuss the possible contribution of this network, what its goals should be and how this should be organized in the most effective fashion. During the coming months we would like to gather a team of students and/or young scientists to further shape the initiative.

We would like to ask for your help by spreading this message to your students. Any graduate or postgraduate student interested in joining thus initiative is cordially invited to contact us.

More information on the initiative and the session at the EGU 2013 General Assembly can be found on http://www.younghs.com or requested by sending an email to younghydrologicsociety@mail.com. Any feedback by replying to this post or sending an email is highly appreciated.

Wouter Berghuijs & Tim van Emmerik M.Sc. students Delft University of Technology”

Click 2 enlarge

2 to 10 and removing the fear for better hydro...

We live in a digital world with smartphones and computers supporting multi touch screen handling. However writing an document we still use only two finger and make a lot of noise hammering the keyboard. Not only colleagues but as well as oneself suffers from ergonomics and RSI. Base of the problem is that in school up to university we have to write reports after reports starting with old fashioned pens to computers. However we are not stimulated to learn next to hand writing, from kindergarten on, simultaneously blind 10 finger typing.

from wiki

Extending this to languages, the key for world peace and gaining knowledge, is to be multilingual. Students using digi gadgets all day long. With tablets in lectures to surf for info or messaging about the Professors hair cut. One side they are used to digital but are afraid to program and prefer spreadsheets click on. Therefore not only oral spoke languages should be though but as well as programming languages. Wether  R, Matlab, C, Fortran etc. in the end doesn't matter. In a funny way step by step removing the fear of coding. Off course the first steps are difficult but after one can do pretty cool stuff in hydrology.

I want to be:






Off course valid as well as to:

What would you like to be when you grew up ... hydrologist (using coding)

Some history ...

Searching for literature on GOOGLE SCHOLAR or WOK links to the website of the journal like JOH  Journal of Hydrology. After reading the abstract one buys the paper of interest for too much money. Only after realising it was the wrong article. Looking back, before the digital revolution, one didn't log in but ordered a printed paper version. 

Cleaning my office and looking through the pile of documents i found an old paper I got from a colleague some years ago.A historic paper and leap forward in isotope hydrology. Skalsh and Farvolden (1976) demonstrated with stable isotopes that the hydro graph is more than event water only. 

Paper version of the article of Skalsh and Farvolden (1976)

Snow campus III:Wonders of Winter...

After last post Wonders of Winters here another snow campus related phenomenon:

To repeat once more :) For a summer hydrologist winter is the "boring" time. Depending on the catchment location precipitation is solid and the catchment is in deep winter sleep without any reaction with only some liters of base flow. zzzz zzzz zzz 

Warm inside with a warm cup of coffee and x-mas sweets its nice to work on last seasons field data and see what happened. While working and thinking some times the falling snow flakes divert the attention and makes one wonder. Not only the light isotopic values of precipitation but even more: the self organizing abilities of water and the human factor. So looking outside the office window one sees ...   

... the world covered nicely under a layer of fluffy white stuff. All the world? No, all beside where human structures like sewer pipes. They releasing enough energy to melt the snow. Nicely seen in the picture below. Arrows in orange  are potholes and the green line with blue arrow is the sewer-pipe ~ 50cm below the grass. 

Picture showing the snow free area where a sewer pipe is.

Interesting hydro news

Two interesing hydro related articles in the web.

1) Mr. Snowman can  can't save us from flooding:

"Ideally, if everybody built themselves a snowman that will slow the thaw down a bit," said Roy Stokes, a spokesman for the agency. Check 4 full @ GUARDIAN

by Bill Watterson

2) How we can change our atmospheric fluxes:

Researchers TU/e together with researchers at the Hong Kong Polytechnic
University (PolyU), have developed a special treatment for cotton fabric that
allows the cotton to absorb exceptional amounts of water from misty air:
340 % of its own weight. What makes this 'coated cotton' so interesting is
that the cotton releases the collected water by itself, as it gets warmer. This
property makes of the coated cotton materials a potential solution to
provide water to the desert regions, for example for agricultural purposes.
The results of this research will be published next month in the scientific
journal Advanced Materials. Check 4 full @ TUEindhoven