Hydrology and Water Resources
Overview: Hydrology is a branch of geoscience concerned with the origin, distribution, movement, and properties of waters of the earth. This includes fluid flow and transport of contaminants in the subsurface environment. Past and present research focuses on a broad spectrum of hydrologic problems. These range from quantifying snow distribution and melt, rainfall and infiltration processes, floods, droughts, terminal lake responses, soil erosion, and groundwater/surface water exchanges. Additionally, modeling tools have been developed and/or applied to investigate stream water quality, groundwater contamination characterization and remediation, and complete watershed responses. Water Resources Engineering draws on principles from hydrology, fluid mechanics, hydraulics, environmental engineering, economics, ecology, political science, and other disciplines in the design and operation of projects and nonstructural methods for water resources planning and management. Research in this area focuses on simulation and optimization modeling and hydroinformatics to improve the planning, design, and operation of water systems over different spatial scales (e.g., individual users or transboundary river basins).
Core Courses
Fall
- CEE 6400CEE 6400 Physical Hydrology
- CEE 6800CEE 6800 CEE Seminar
Spring
- CEE 5430CEE 5430/6430 Groundwater Engineering
- CEE 5490CEE 5490/6490 Integrated River Basin/Watershed Planning and Management
- CEE 6660CEE 6660 Environmental and Hydrologic Data Analysis and Experimentation
- CEE 6800CEE 6800 CEE Seminar
Note that with approval from the graduate committee, required courses can be waived if the student has successfully completed an equivalent course at Utah State University or elsewhere.
Electives
All classes are offered yearly, unless otherwise specified.
Fall
- CEE 6800CEE 6800 Water and Environmental Seminar
- CEE 6400CEE 6400 Physical Hydrology
- CEE 5500CEE 5500/6500 Open Channel Hydraulics
- CEE 6740CEE 6740 Surface Water Quality Modeling
- CEE 6930CEE 6930 Advanced Hydrology through CUAHSI Virtual University
- CEE 6540CEE 6540 Hydraulic Structures Design
- CEE 6930CEE 6930 Hydrologic Field Methods (Offered: 2024)
- CEE 6930CEE 6930 Hydraulic Modeling
- CEE 5410CEE 5410/6410 Water Resources Systems Analysis (Offered: even years)
- CEE 6610CEE 6610 Environmental Quality Analysis
- CEE 5655CEE 5655/6655 Green Infrastructure
- WATS 6900WATS 6900 Sediment Transport Mechanics
- WATS 6900WATS 6900 Advanced Topics in Stream Ecology
- WATS 6900WATS 6900 Hydrologic Modeling/Environmental Objectives in Watershed Management/Hydrology and Watershed Management Modeling (1 to 3 sections)
- WATS 6900WATS 6900 Drone Data Analysis Project
- WATS 6900WATS 6900 Modeling for Natural Resource Management
- WATS 6915WATS 6915 GIS fundamentals
- PSC 4700PSC 4700 - Irrigated Soils (may need to talk with instructor to take PSC 6900)
- PSC 6810PSC 6810- Climate and Climate Change
- PSC 5000PSC 5000/6000 Environmental Instrumentation
- PSC 6123PSC 6123 Climate Data Analysis
- PSC 4150PSC 4150/6150 Bioinformatics and Big Data Mining
Spring
- CEE 6800CEE 6800 Water and Environmental Seminar
- CEE 5490CEE 5490/6490 Integrated River Basin/Watershed Planning and Management
- CEE 5003CEE 5003/6003 Remote Sensing of Land Surfaces
- CEE 5190CEE 5190/6190 GIS for Civil Engineers
- CEE 5470CEE 5470/6470 Sedimentation Engineering
- CEE 5550CEE 5550/6550 Hydraulics of Closed Conduits
- CEE 6660CEE 6660 Environmental and Hydrologic Data Analysis and Experimentation
- CEE 5430CEE 5430/6430 Groundwater Engineering
- CEE 6110CEE 6110 Hydroinformatics
- CEE 6930CEE 6930 - Computer vision
- CEE 6640CEE 6640 Physical and Chemical Environmental Process Engineering
- CEE 6006CEE 6006 Agricultural Water Management
- WATS 4930WATS 4930/6920 Advanced GIS and Spatial Analysis
- WATS 6150WATS 6150 Fluvial Geomorphology (Offered: 2024 then yearly after)
- WATS 6491WATS 6491 Streamflow Analysis
- WATS 6490WATS 6490 Small Watershed Hydrology
- WATS 6840WATS 6840 Ecohydraulics (Offered: 2024 then even years after)
- WATS 4500WATS 4500/6500 Limnology: Ecology of Inland Waters
- WATS 5620WATS 5620 Introduction to Low Tech Process Based Restoration of Riverscapes (Required for all subsequent courses in series)
- WATS 5621WATS 5621 Science and Case Studies of Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration of Riverscapes
- WATS 5622WATS 5622 Planning Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration of Riverscapes
- WATS 5623WATS 5623 Designing Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration of Riverscapes
- WATS 5624WATS 5624 Implementing Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration of Riverscapes
- WATS 6900WATS 6900 Adaptive management and monitoring
- PSC 6810PSC 6810Climate and Climate Change