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CE 585 Principles of Surface Water Quality Modeling

3 Credit Hours

This course addresses how human inputs affect natural and engineered aquatic systems through mathematical modeling of system dynamics. Course topics integrate physical, chemical, and biologic processes related to pollutants and lower food-web dynamics. Lectures and assignments cover both theory and application. Applications are relevant to informing management, protection, and restoration of inland and coastal waters.

Prerequisite

CE 383 Hydrology and Urban Water Systems (or an equivalent quantitative hydrology course)

CE 373 Fundamentals of Environmental Engineering (or an equivalent chemical/environmental processes course)

Graduate Standing.

Course Objectives

This class will teach students to develop, apply, and critically evaluate surface water quality models. Modeling problems will typically address how natural and engineered aquatic systems respond to pollutant loads and other environmental factors. The course will first teach students to model generic substances within different settings (rivers, lakes, etc.), subject to reaction, settling, diffusion, dispersion, volatilization, and advection.  The course will then cover the more complex and interrelated dynamics associated with specific water quality constituents of common management interest (e.g., dissolved oxygen, nutrients, temperature, algae). While it is impossible to cover all potentially relevant water quality constituents within a single course, the course will provide students with the structure and fundamental principles to expand models to other potentially relevant substances.

Student Learning Outcomes:

  1. Mathematically represent the fate and transport of conservative and non-conservative substances in streams, lakes, and other surface water bodies.
  2. Based on first principles, develop analytical and numerical solutions to water quality modeling problems.
  3. Identify and explain the bio-physical processes controlling dissolved oxygen, nutrients, phytoplankton, pathogenic bacteria, and other water quality constituents, and apply these processes within the modeling environment.
  4. Identify and explain the bio-physical processes controlling important sediment-water fluxes within a water body, and apply these processes within the modeling environment.
  5. Identify and explain the physical processes controlling temperature and heat within surface water systems and apply these processes within the modeling environment.
  6. Explain and apply calibration, validation, sensitivity, and uncertainty analyses within the modeling environment.
  7. Apply models to evaluate scenarios relevant to pollution control, engineering interventions, and hydro-climatological variability.

Course Requirements

Complete homework assignments, exams, and one project

Software proficiency in Excel and/or a common coding language (e.g., Python, MATLAB)

Course Outline

  1. Reactors and reaction kinetics
  2. Numerical methods
  3. Diffusion and mixing
  4. Model segmentation
  5. Dissolved oxygen modeling
  6. Eutrophication modeling
  7. Model diagnostics
  8. Heat/stratification modeling
  9. Pathogen modeling
  10. Advanced topics

Textbook

S. Chapra, Surface Water-quality Modeling, Waveland Press, 1997/2008, ISBN 1-57766-605-4.