Runoff Predictions in Ungauged Basins (PUB) Summer Short Course

June 6 - 10, 2016

USGS John Wesley Powell Center for Synthesis and Analysis

Fort Collins, CO

Early Bird Registration Deadline: April 1, 2016

Regular Registration Deadline: May 1, 2016

This U.S.-based summer short course, previously offered in Europe in 2015, is devoted to runoff prediction in ungauged basins (PUB), i.e., predicting water runoff at locations where no runoff data are available. This lack of data presents considerable challenges to catchment managers who require information on water flows for decision making. This course, based on the recently published book, "Runoff Prediction in Ungauged Basins: Synthesis across Processes, Places and Scales" (Bloschl et al., 2013), will provide hydrologists with the theory and methods to address this critical challenge. The collection of speakers will bring together results from individual location-based studies and show how a comparative approach can be applied to learn from the differences and similarities between catchments around the world along gradients of climate and landscape features.

Course Objectives

This course is aimed at training students in methods to estimate streamflow at ungauged locations across different time and spatial scales. Students will be introduced to approaches through a series of lectures that are supplemented by complimentary in-class exercises using data and catchments from the United States. Through this combination of lectures and hands-on experiences, the course will emphasize the larger concepts of catchment processes and behavior and deepen the students’ understanding of catchment hydrology.

Prerequisites

Students will benefit most from this course if they have completed the following course work:

• Introductory hydrology course with understanding of catchments and river networks, river monitoring, hydrologic modeling, and the water cycle.
• Environmental statistics course covering basic statistical concepts such as the mean, median, probability distributions, hypothesis testing, and regression analysis.
• All course exercises and examples will be conducted in the freely-available statistical software R. You will need to have the current version of R installed on your computer; however, is not required that you are proficient in the software.

Course Textbook (Included with registration)

Blöschl, G., M. Sivapalan, T. Wagener, A. Viglione, H. Savenije (Eds.). 2013. Runoff Prediction in Ungauged Basins: Synthesis across Processes, Places and Scales. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, ISBN: 978-1-10-702818-0, 490 p.