Hydrology I

Jozsef Szilagyi, Professor of Hydrology Department of Hydraulic and Water

Resources Engineering Budapest University of Technology and

Economics

Lecture #1: Hydrology and the global hydrologic cycle

• Hydrology is defined as the geoscience that describes and predicts the occurence, circulation, and distribution of the water of the Earth and its atmosphere. It has two principal foci.

(a) The global hydrologic cycle: the distribution, spatial and temporal variations of the water substance in the terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric compartments of the global water system.

(b) The land phase of the hydrologic cycle: the movement of the water substance on and under the earth’s land surface, the physical and chemical interactions with earth materials accompanying that movement and the biological processes that conduct or affect that movement.

Hydrologic knowledge is applied to the use and control of the water resources on the land areas of the Earth.

liquid

Why is it that the above curve is not symmetric?

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Why is it that South America is the first in each category forunit area values?

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