Physical Hydrology

Dingman's goal throughout Physical Hydrology is to provide an understanding of the conceptual basis of the subject and introduce the quantitative relations involved in answering scientific and water-resources-management questions. The author supplies the basic physical principles necessary for developing a sound intuitive and quantitative sense of the way in which water moves through the land. He outlines the assumptions behind each conceptual approach but also identifies some of the limitations of each. Rich in substance and written to fulfill the needs of future researchers and experts in the field, Dingman treats hydrology as a distinct geoscience that is continually expanding to deal with large-scale changes in land use and climate. The text is organized around four principal themes: the basic concepts underlying the science of hydrology; the global climate, the global hydrologic cycle, and the relation of hydrology to soils and vegetation; the land phase of the hydrologic cycle; and water-resource-management principles and the ways in which hydrologic analysis is applied in that context. Coverage includes approaches for determining regional evapotranspiration rates, the movement of ground water in rock fractures, and the relation of hydrologic regimes to past and future climates. It offers in-depth discussions of hydrologic modeling--model use, modeling terminology, and the process of model development; water-resource-management goals and processes; water supply and demand; water-quality issues; floods and flood-frequency analysis; and drought and low-flow analysis. Outstanding features that facilitate learning include: A tabulation of documented trends in global change of climatic and hydrologic quantities; information on methods for handling missing data; discussions of the BROOK90 model and how it can be used with the text; Internet links to hydrologic information; exercises designed for student exploration; and Excel spreadsheets on the accompanying CD.