What environmental & water resources engineering covers, a roadmap of this 21-item program, the hydrologic cycle, rainfall-runoff relationships, the Rational Method and NRCS/SCS curve number method for peak flow estimation, and watershed delineation basics.
Environmental and water resources engineering sits at the intersection of hydrology, fluid mechanics, chemistry, biology, and regulatory law — and nearly every design in the field starts with the same question: how much water is actually coming, and where does it go? This module builds the mental model the rest of the program assumes, from the hydrologic cycle through the two workhorse methods for estimating peak runoff, the Rational Method and the NRCS/SCS curve number method, and the watershed delineation work that both depend on.
By the end of this module you should be able to explain why a "100-year storm" is a statistical statement rather than a calendar prediction, and why the Rational Method's single peak-flow output is not enough on its own to size a detention basin — a distinction Module 3's stormwater content and Module 8's open channel flow content each build on from their own side of the problem.