Hydrology and Water Resources
1. What does Hydrology and Water Resources Mean?
Hydrology is the science that deals with the occurrence and transport of water on the earth. A large part of the earth contains water, but it is unevenly distributed and even the quality shows large deviations and hence the resource is often limited. In some situations, the presence of water can become temporarily so large that it forms a natural hazard.
2. The need for Hydrology and Water Resources
Population growth in combination with socio-economic progress is resulting in increasing demand, and hence the need to control and manage the limited regional and local water resources. Local knowledge of how the hydrological system operates is therefore of crucial importance in water resources planning and management and is a multi-disciplinary approach to modern environmental policymaking and implementation.
Hydrologists are trained to have the background to describe the processes and relationships of the natural water systems. This entails an analytic, problem-orientated approach in which conceptual understanding is gradually built up. By collecting, processing and interpreting data, hydrologists can express the behaviour of the system in quantitative terms with spatial analysis, modelling and simulations. Hydrology plays a key role in water resource assessments for domestic, agricultural, industrial water supply and in mitigation of flood and drought damages, and environmental management and planning.
