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    ASSIGNMENT: Water Balance Analysis

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    tesh
    1. The document provides instructions for conducting a water balance analysis of an urban catchment by selecting a watershed, downloading daily precipitation and streamflow data for a year, determining average annual precipitation and streamflow, and using a mass balance to calculate evapotranspiration. 2. Students are asked to analyze the data to determine what percentage of annual precipitation leaves as discharge and evapotranspiration and explain if these values should be the same each year and why or why not. 3. Students are also asked to compare their results with other groups and provide an analysis of differences in terms of location, topography, land use, and climate.

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    ASSIGNMENT: Water Balance Analysis

    Uploaded by

    tesh
    52 views1 page
    1. The document provides instructions for conducting a water balance analysis of an urban catchment by selecting a watershed, downloading daily precipitation and streamflow data for a year, determining average annual precipitation and streamflow, and using a mass balance to calculate evapotranspiration. 2. Students are asked to analyze the data to determine what percentage of annual precipitation leaves as discharge and evapotranspiration and explain if these values should be the same each year and why or why not. 3. Students are also asked to compare their results with other groups and provide an analysis of differences in terms of location, topography, land use, and climate.

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    unit_2_assignment

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    unit_2_assignment_14668090591895629990.v2

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    1. The document provides instructions for conducting a water balance analysis of an urban catchment by selecting a watershed, downloading daily precipitation and streamflow data for a year, determining average annual precipitation and streamflow, and using a mass balance to calculate evapotranspiration. 2. Students are asked to analyze the data to determine what percentage of annual precipitation leaves as discharge and evapotranspiration and explain if these values should be the same each year and why or why not. 3. Students are also asked to compare their results with other groups and provide an analysis of differences in terms of location, topography, land use, and climate.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    52 views1 page

    ASSIGNMENT: Water Balance Analysis

    Uploaded by

    tesh
    1. The document provides instructions for conducting a water balance analysis of an urban catchment by selecting a watershed, downloading daily precipitation and streamflow data for a year, determining average annual precipitation and streamflow, and using a mass balance to calculate evapotranspiration. 2. Students are asked to analyze the data to determine what percentage of annual precipitation leaves as discharge and evapotranspiration and explain if these values should be the same each year and why or why not. 3. Students are also asked to compare their results with other groups and provide an analysis of differences in terms of location, topography, land use, and climate.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 1

    Water Sustainability in Cities – Unit 2 Assignment

    ASSIGNMENT: Water Balance Analysis

    Conduct a water balance study of an urban catchment. The following is the summary of tasks:
    1. Select a watersheda, a location of your choice
    2. Download “daily” precipitation and streamflow (i.e. discharge) data for one year (for
    example, 2001-01-01 to 2001-12-31).
    3. Determine average annual values of precipitation b and streamflowc in volume unit such as
    cubit feet or acre-feet.
    4. Conduct a mass balance on a long-term basis (steady state where change in storage is
    negligible) to calculate evapotranspirationd.

    Based on the data analysis, provide answers to the following questions:


    a. What percent of annual precipitation leaves the watershed as discharge and as
    evapotranspiration?
    b. Are values from above (a) and (b) supposed to be same every year for the selected
    watershed. Explain your reasoning, why or why not.
    c. Compare your results with other group members and provide a comparative analysis of
    the results. Hint: Think about the differences in terms of location, topography, land use,
    climatic condition, etc.

    Notes:
    a) Watershed selection will depend on your choice and data availability. There are various
    sources on the web to search for historical data. You may start with “USGS Water Data –
    Daily Streamflow” (http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/dv/?referred_module=sw) and locate
    a gaging station where both precipitation and streamflow data are available. A step-by-
    step guideline for data download is provided in the handout.
    b) Usually precipitation data is given in “inches”, so you need to cumulate precipitation of
    every day for the entire year to get an annual precipitation data in inches, which can then
    be converted into volume unit by multiplying it with the watershed area. For example,
    Water Volume (cubit feet) = depth of precipitation (feet) * area of watershed (square feet)
    c) Streamflow or discharge is usually reported as flow rate (cubic feet per second or cfs). In
    this case, you will need to average out the daily data for the entire year to get annual
    average streamflow in cfs, which can then be converted into volume (cubic feet) by
    multiplying with time units in a year (1 year = 365*24*60*60 seconds).
    d) Evapotranspiration is the amount of water going out of the catchment through
    evaporation and transpiration. In this assignment, we assumed that precipitation is IN and
    streamflow and evapotranspiration as OUT in the water balance equation:
    In – Out = Change in Storage

    Grading and Assessment Scheme:


    10 points each for data analysis of precipitation and streamflow
    5 points for each of questions “a” and “b”
    10 points for question “c”
    Total = 40 points
    [Excellent: >90%; Very Good: 80-90%; Good: 70-80%; Poor: 60-70%]

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