CE 3342 Water Resources

Engineering – Lecture 3
Introduction

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 Announcements
• Homework No. 1 on Blackboard later
today
– Due Jan 28 (Mon)
• TA – Mr. Ali Jozaghi,
ali.jozaghi@mavs.uta.edu
– Tuesday 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
– Thursday 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

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 Today’s topics
• Water budget
– Residence time
• Catchment
• Catchment water budget
– Runoff ratio

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 The water budget
• The hydrological cycle can be described quantitatively by applying
the principle of conservation of mass, which often is referred to as
a water balance or water budget
• A simple statement of conservation of mass for any particular
compartment (usually referred to as a control volume) is that the
time rate of change of mass stored within the compartment is equal
to the difference between the inflow rate and the outflow rate:

where
V = volume of water within the control volume [L3]
t = time [T]; I = inflow rate [L3 T-1]
O = outflow rate [L3 T-1]
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V

From
Hornberger
et al. (1998)

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 Residence time
• Tr [T], is a measure of how long, on average, a molecule of water
spends in that reservoir before moving on to another reservoir of the
hydrological cycle

• The residence time provides an indication of the time scales for

flushing a solute out of that particular reservoir

• Water in the oceans has a residence time approaching 3000 years,

while water in the atmosphere has a residence time of only 0.02
years or about 8 days; the residence time of water in rivers is 0.05
years or about 17 days (see Table 1.1)
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V

From
Hornberger
et al. (1998)

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Example calculation of residence time

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 Calculate the residence time of
global atmospheric water
• The total volume of atmospheric water is
12,900 km3 (from Table 1.1.1)
• If the atmosphere is my reservoir:
– What is my source?
– What is my sink?

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The global water budget

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The continental water budget

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 The continental water budget (cont.)
• Apply the principle of mass conservation, using the continents
as our control volume:
0 0 0
dV/dt = p + rsi+ rgi+ rso+ rgo+ et

where
V=volume of water stored
p=precipitation rate
rsi=surface water inflow rate
rgi=ground water inflow rate
rso=surface water outflow rate From
rgo=ground water outflow rate Hornberger
et al. (1998)
et=evapotranspiration

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 The continental water budget (cont.)

• Averaging over a long time period, we have:

0 0 0
1 T dV V (T )  V (0)
T 
0 dt
dt 
T


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The continental water budget (cont.)

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 The continental water budget

From Planet Earth (2006) 17

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 𝑟𝑠ҧ
Runoff ratio =
𝑝ҧ

From
Hornberger
et al. (1998)

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 The catchment
• A catchment is an area of land in which
water flowing across the land surface
drains into a particular stream or river and
ultimately flows through a single point or
outlet on that stream or river

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 The catchment (cont.)
• A point is within a catchment if surface water
hypothetically flowing from that point ultimately
appears at the river station defining the catchment
outlet
– the point is not within the catchment if surface water
flows from it into another river or into the same river
below the given river station
• The boundary separating regions which do and do not
contribute water to that river station is called a divide
• A catchment is then defined as all points that
potentially can contribute surface water to a particular
river station
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 Major River System River Basin with River
National
Forecast Points

Forecast Group Headwater Basin and Radar High Resolution Flash

Rainfall Grid Flood Basins
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 The catchment water budget
• Apply equation (1.2) to a catchment
• V is the volume of water stored on or beneath the
surface of the catchment
• One inflow is precipitation falling on the catchment
• By definition, there is no surface water inflow into
the catchment
• Assume that the groundwater divide coincides with
the surface water divide, then groundwater inflows
can be neglected
• Outflows consist of loss to the atmosphere and
discharge at the river station chosen in defining
the basin 0 0 0

dV/dt = p + rsi+ rgi+ rso+ rgo+ et 26

 The catchment water budget (cont.)
• The conservation equation for the catchment may
be written as:

where: V = volume of water stored in the

catchment [L3]
p = precipitation rate [L3 T-1]
rs = rate of surface runoff [L3 T-1]
rg = net rate of groundwater runoff [L3 T-1]
et = rate of evapotranspiration [L3 T-1]

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 Long-term catchment water budget

• For questions involving long-range regional

planning, average quantities are often adequate
• In this case, changes in volume of water stored
in the catchment can be neglected
• If, in addition, we assume net groundwater runoff
to be negligibly small, the budget equation
becomes:

0 0 0

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Long-term catchment water budget (cont.)

• As an example of the use of equation (1.8), estimate the

average annual evapotranspiration in the James River Basin
above Scottsville, Virginia
• The groundwater systems in this area are highly localized
(i.e., controlled by the small-scale topography) so the
assumption of negligible groundwater flow is likely to be valid.
• According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the James at
Scottsville drains an area of 11,834 km2 and the average
discharge is 144.5 m3 s-1.
• The U.S. Weather Bureau climatological records report data
that indicate that average precipitation on the catchment is
about 1080 mm yr-1

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Long-term catchment water budget (cont.)

Calculation of mean annual runoff and evapotranspiration

(mm/yr)
• The terms in equation (1.8) must be expressed in comparable units, so
we will express the river discharge in mm yr-1 distributed over the
catchment; that is, the volume of flow will be converted to the equivalent
depth of water over the entire catchment by dividing by catchment area

Step 1) Volume of water for the year=144.5x3.154x107 m3/yr

Step 2) Area of catchment=11834x106 m2
Step 3) (Uniform) Depth of water=Volume/Area=0.385 m/yr=385 mm/yr

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Long-term catchment water budget (cont.)

• Equation (1.8) indicates that 695 mm yr-1

or that about 64% of the rain that falls in
this humid region of the United States is
returned to the atmosphere through
evapotranspiration
• It is small wonder that evaporation control
is of major concern in arid regions of the
world

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NOAA/NWS/West Gulf River
Forecast Center’s Service Area

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NOAA/NWS/West Gulf River
Forecast Center’s Service Area 33
End of slides

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