Hydrology Corner Blog: Irrigation and Electricity

Forty Centuries of Water Monitoring

A team of hydrologists and hydrographers with the Ministry of Water Resources, Irrigation and Electricity (MWRIE) in Sudan recently took part in some AQUARIUS training where I had the chance to learn about their monitoring program.

Water News

Technical Note: Stage and Water Width Measurement of a Mountain Stream Using a Simple Time-Lapse Camera

Yet another use for relatively inexpensive gauge cameras. Image management is clearly the new frontier for hydrometric data management.
– Stu Hamilton

How Does Changing Climate Bring More Extreme Events?

As front-line workers in the water sector, we are often asked for our opinions, particularly about the effects of climate change on local water resources. Attributing general cause to specific effect – i.e. connecting the global scale to the local scale, is a topic that most of us would like to avoid. However, it is also a useful starting point for improving public awareness of the importance of monitoring. This report focuses on weather and climate, but the following statement is also true for water: “More international collaboration with a focus on consistent climate monitoring will lead to improved climate services, helping us to better monitor, understand and anticipate climate extremes.”
– Stu Hamilton

Groundwater Pumping Drying Up Great Plains Streams, Driving Fish Extinctions

More news supporting the notion that the measurement and monitoring of small and ephemeral flows are important. A major weakness of most hydrometric monitoring programs is that the spatial extent of hydraulically inter-connected surface flow is not monitored. In this study, the Arikaree River in Colorado used to flow about 70 miles, but is now predicted to be reduced to have flow in only a ½ mile stretch by 2045. The truism that “you manage what you measure” applies to freshwater resources. Better source water management will require better intent, techniques, and methods for measurement and monitoring of small flows.
– Stu Hamilton

Using Crowdsourced and Weather Station Data to Fill Cloud Gaps in MODIS Snow Cover Datasets

We have abundant, disparate data but huge information gaps across all scales. This R Package is an example of how data from disparate sources (differing in spatial coverage, extent, time, and quality) can be effectively knitted together to create snow cover maps. As we move into the era of the Internet of Things (IoT), we need to be aware of the change in data availability and how this newly discovered data can be used to address deficiencies in conventional monitoring data (e.g. satellite observations). There is enormous opportunity, but these new opportunities have a large potential for publication of compelling disinformation. It will take all of the expertise of the monitoring community to watch these developments to ensure that the truth about the phenomena of interest prevails over the technological imperative. In principle, the results of data integration should produce better information. The danger is that if all of the data is consumed, there is none left for independent validation and verification of the produced information. Lots to think about.
– Stu Hamilton

Protecting Water Resources Through a Focus on Headwater Streams

This post resonates with a theme that many readers of Hydrology Corner know I care about. This blog post makes a strong case for understanding headwater streams. However, it is at the intersection where sub-surface water becomes flowing surface water that we encounter the smallest possible flow volumes and ephemerality as small flows become zero flow, and then go back again. Conventional monitoring systems under-perform for measurement and monitoring of small and ephemeral flows and the uncertainties in this realm are practically unknowable. More needs to be done to improve source water protection by improving our systems for source water monitoring.
– Stu Hamilton

The Big Ecological Role of Small Natural Features

Small natural features are small things of high importance. I like the analogy used of the “Frodo Effect,” where the small and unassuming Hobbit has more importance than his larger peers. The best that Gandalf and the fellowship of the ring can do is to protect Frodo so he can do his job. There are many water features that are Frodo-like. I would expand the concept to include not only place-based features but also small natural events (e.g. channel modifying flow events) that occur in the dimension of time. At any rate, you may find the term “Frodo effect” useful for explaining your work and why you, or anyone else, would/should care about small natural freshwater features.
– Stu Hamilton

Citizen Science Is Making It Harder for China’s Biggest Polluters to Hide

The goal is to have more than a million river watchers along the Yangtze in the next three years, which is citizen science at an unprecedented scale. However, the corresponding data management challenges for river observation are daunting. To have trust in water samples or data collected by lay observers, the data must be supported by adequate metadata. Metadata have always been the weak link of citizen science. However, an estimated 5 billion people globally have some sort of cell phone and the phones are pretty much smart enough to tag data with the who, what, when, where, and how that are needed to provide meaningful context. There may be few places in the world that have the population density of China, but there are also few places that can afford not to learn something about citizen science from this large-scale experiment.
– Stu Hamilton

Funding Woes for Stream Gages Put Crucial Water Data at Risk

There is no shortage of news about the enormous costs from either too much, or too little, water in communities, economies, and environments. How is it that there is so little interest in funding the monitoring networks that are needed to ensure that we have the engineering to keep us safe and the wisdom to sustain healthy freshwater systems?
– Stu Hamilton

The Divining Rod – A History of Water Witching

When you are in the water business for a long time, it is inevitable that you will either be asked or told about the reliability and accuracy of divining rods. I even once had a colleague who, when searching for the edge of water under an ice cover, would use bent coat hangers to locate the edge of the stream bed, so as not to run his ice drill into the rocks. You might think that this USGS paper from 1917 would have put the whole topic to rest long ago, but it hasn’t. People still believe what they want to believe.
– Stu Hamilton

When a Hurricane Approaches, the USGS is Ready

Good data from extreme events is rarely the result of good luck. It takes a lot of planning and preparedness to get the right equipment in the right place at the right time. The USGS rapid deployment gauges are a good example of how to be prepared for extreme weather.
– Stu Hamilton

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Hydrology Corner Blog: Irrigation and Electricity

Forty Centuries of Water Monitoring