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.