Why is this important to learn about Groundwater Hydrology? As the world’s largest distributed store of fresh water, groundwater plays a central part in sustaining ecosystems and enabling human adaptation to climate variability and change. The strategic importance of groundwater for global water and food security will probably intensify under climate change as more frequent and intense climate extremes (droughts and floods) increase variability in precipitation, soil moisture and surface water. Despite its importance, groundwater remains one of the least understood component of the water cycle, because it is a hidden resources that resides below the surface in the pore spaces of rocks. In the last decades, enhanced terrestrial observation systems and remote sensing technologies have added understanding of groundwater’s dynamics and occurrence. However, to correctly interpret these innovative observations, basic knowledge of the hydrology of groundwater is essential. The knowledge you will gain in this class, about groundwater processes and how to observe and access groundwater is relevant in multiple branches of society. Due to the vital importance of groundwater such knowledge will be a great advantage on the job-market.

What will you learn? This course provides you with basic and advanced knowledge of groundwater hydrology, including the role of groundwater in the water cycle, physical concepts relevant for understanding aquifer conditions, groundwater flow, aquifer mechanics, well hydraulics and geology of groundwater occurrence. Basic knowledge about how remote sensing methods help to detect groundwater will be covered as well.

What to expect in class? Class sessions will consist of a combination two 50 min lectures every week combined with one 3-hour lab during most of the weeks. The lectures introduce concepts of groundwater hydrology.

The lab includes hands-on practical exercises and/or data analysis on concepts of groundwater hydrology and related real-world problems.

Prerequisites: Math 1206/Math 1016 or equivalent. Exposure to Physics, especially mechanical energy, pressure, force, stress would be helpful. At least one course in geology would be very helpful but not mandatory.

Why is this important to learn programming and data analysis methods? In the present era of emerging big data archives, satellite Earth observations and advancing computer technology, analysis of big and complex datasets is becoming more essential in Geosciences. National and international data archives are providing publicly available large geo data libraries. Or you might have data from a field work project and want to mine them most efficiently. Develop skills in programming and data analysis methods for including geo data analysis in your graduate projects. Lastly, university graduates able to efficiently handle large datasets will have a great advantage on the job-market.

What will you learn? This course provides you with knowledge how to download, mine, process, analyze, visualize and interpret rich geo datasets using computer programming. To achieve that, you will get the chance to strengthen your technical and analytical skills for developing data analysis software with Python.
The first major goal of this course is that you learn and understand basic concepts of computer programming in Python, including object-oriented programming. You will practice thinking algorithmically and translating a data analysis problem into an efficient Python computer program. You will also gain experience in up-to-date and collaborative tools used to code in Python. The second major goal of this course is that you become able to apply important data science methods that are specifically relevant in geosciences and that will help you to mine your data effectively. The course will introduce concepts of signal decomposition, regression modeling as well as basic machine learning approaches for geo-data analysis problems and introduce related syntax and packages in Python. You will also learn how to load data from national archives directly into your analysis software. While this course is taught in Python, many components of this course are directly transferable to other programming languages.

What to expect in class? Class sessions will consist of a combination of lecture elements combined with follow-on tutorials and independent exercises. During the last three weeks of the semester, the course will conclude with a data analysis project for a big geo data set of your choice and a presentation and discussion of results and approaches taken.

Prerequisites: Previous knowledge in computer programming is helpful but not required for this course. Reasonable computer literacy and basic knowledge in Mathematics/Linear Algebra is strongly recommended.

See the entire Syllabus for Fall 2022 for more information. 

Observations of the planetary gravity field enable the investigation of its interior and surface density distribution. Repeated gravity observations from orbit allows measuring redistributions of the planetary density over time, namely mass fluxes on the surface and subsurface. For the Earth, satellite gravimetric missions enable a continuous monitoring of mass transports in subsystems such as Hydrosphere, Oceans, Cryosphere, Solid Earth, and their feedback with global climate.

This course will concentrate on gravimetric satellite missions that map the gravity field associated with Earth and Moon. We will develop an understanding of scientific background, mission configuration, post- processing of global gravity fields and Earth science applications using the examples from recent and ongoing satellite missions. We will study on a variety of applications of satellite gravitmetry in Hydrology, Oceanography, Cryospheric and Solid Earth sciences. A focus will lie on the applications in Hydrology, hence, monitoring of changes in water resources from space. Of particular importance is the sensitivity of the mission to changes in groundwater.

Topics of the class will be: gravitational physics, satellite geodesy, Earth’s subsystems and their mass fluxes, climate change impacts, water resources and drought monitoring, sea level change, melting of ice caps. The class will be presented as a combination of lectures and seminars as well as two computer based exercises handling gravimetric satellite datasets.

Groundwater responses to climate variability and human influences: Theory and Methods

As the world’s largest distributed store of fresh water, ground water plays a central part in sustaining ecosystems and enabling human adaptation to climate variability and change. The strategic importance of ground water for global water and food security will probably intensify under climate change as more frequent and intense climate extremes (droughts and floods) increase variability in precipitation, soil moisture and surface water. In this course, we review observational and analytic methods available to assess the impacts of climate on ground water through natural and human-induced processes as well as through groundwater-driven feedbacks on the climate system. The interdependent system changes will be analyzed on three levels:

• Influence of climate on groundwater systems

• Human and indirect climate impacts on groundwater systems

• Groundwater impacts on the climate system

For observational methods, a focus will lie on remote sensing techniques of satellite gravimetry and InSAR. Furthermore, we will examine the possible opportunities and challenges of using and sustaining groundwater resources in climate adaptation strategies. And finally, we will discuss global science and policy related to transboundary groundwater aquifers.

Topics of the class will be: Groundwater, Hydrological Cycle, Climate Change, Water resources and drought monitoring, Remote sensing of Groundwater, Groundwater Modeling, Sustainable Water Use, Groundwater Policies. The class will be presented as a combination of lectures and seminars. About 20% of the courses will consist of Matlab-based exercises on analysis of different remote sensing data, analysis of terrestrial groundwater data and groundwater modeling.

Selected Chapters of "Essentials of Geology", Stephen Marshak, 2016, 5th Edition, W. W. Norton & Company.