Hydrology 101
This term describes the volume of water flowing past a point in a river per unit time, usually measured in cubic metres per second.
What is streamflow (or discharge)?
The removal of pollutants through settling is called.
Sedimentation
The parameter typically used to measure river levels
What is Stage?
This hidden water use makes up most of your personal water footprint.
What is food production (virtual water)?
This sector often drives water demand decisions long before utilities are consulted.
What is land-use planning / urban development?
What do we call the portion of precipitation that flows over land or through shallow soils into rivers instead of infiltrating?
What is runoff?
A facility designed to permanently store stormwater for water quality improvement.
Retention pon
A method typically used to collect river discharge in a steep turbulent creeks
What is Salt Dilution Method?
This popular drink can take over 100 litres of water to produce a single cup.
What is coffee?
This financial tool increasingly determines whether flood protection actually gets built.
What is insurance?
This graph shows how streamflow at a specific location changes over time, often during and after a storm event.
What is a hydrograph?
The increase in runoff caused by urban development is called.
Urban runoff
Discharge conditions appropriate to a ADV discharge measurement.
What is a wadable laminar flow?
This household appliance often uses more water when it’s half full than when it’s full.
What is a washing machine?
This policy choice can create water shortages without changing rainfall at all.
What is allocation rules or water licensing?
A “1-in-100 year flood” refers to this statistical concept, not a flood that happens once every 100 years.
What is a 1% annual exceedance probability (AEP)?
The volume of rainfall exceeding infiltration and storage capacity is known as.
Excess runoff
The physical river parameter that governs the low flow of a stage-discharge relationship?
What is control?
This common landscaping choice can use more water than the people living in the house.
What is a lawn / grass?
This non-water decision quietly shapes long-term municipal water demand.
What is housing density / zoning?
This low-lying area adjacent to a river is periodically inundated during high flows and plays a key role in flood storage and ecosystem health.
What is a floodplain?
The hydrologic process by which water moves downward through soil layers.
Percolation
Ice cover shifts the maximum velocity __________ due to _________.
what is the maximum velocity is shifted downward due to upper shear stress/upper-boundary roughness.
This invisible form of water travels globally inside the products we buy.
What is virtual water?
This emergency response issue becomes a water crisis when systems lose pressure or power.
What is wildfire response?