Departments
Hydrology and Water Resources
Modules
The department of Hydrology and Water Resources offers the following modules:
HWR 1541: Introductory Hydrology & Meteorology Definition and scope of Hydrology as an area of study; the hydrologic cycle; energy transformations and the water budget equation; the catchment and human interference; precipitation as a process; types of precipitation; artificially induced precipitation; measurement of precipitation; effective depth of precipitation; potential and actual evapo-transpiration and their measurement; factors influencing evaporation; increased water supplies through reduced evaporation; the runoff process; measurement of streamflow; the infiltration process; soil moisture, moisture storage and measurement; factors and elements of climate; impact of people on climate and the influence of climate on historical events; the atmosphere, its structure and composition; radiation, temperature, pressure, wind, humidity, precipitation, clouds, air masses and fronts; measurements; weather maps.
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HWR 1542: Introduction to Groundwater The subject matter of hydrogeology; origin and occurrence of groundwater; porosity and hydraulic conductivity of earth materials; geologic formations as aquifers; types of aquifers; the water table; definition of the terms hydraulic head, hydraulic gradient, transmissivity, storage coefficient and specific yield; introduction to the fundamental principles of groundwater movement; Darcy's law and its application; borehole and well design, sitting, construction and operation; groundwater quality and pollution.
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HWR 1641: Southern African Weather & Water Resources Weather and climate in relation to the physical structure of the atmosphere, radiation in the atmosphere, radiation laws, cloud micro-physics and precipitation processes; factors of climate and climatic classification; regional distribution of climate around the world; seasons and weather in southern Africa; introduction to the analytical methods of climatology; nature and extent of the major surface-water and groundwater basins in southern Africa; introduction to cross-border water resources issues in the region; South Africa's water sources and their quality and availability, including rainwater as a resource.
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HWR 1642: Water Quality Principles The importance of water chemistry and microbiology in the management of water quality; units of chemical measurement; types of chemical reactions in water; redox reactions; gas and mass transfers; law of mass action; ionization and ion exchange; introduction to isotope hydrology; presentation of the results of chemical analyses; physical and microbial characteristics of water; fundamental principles of the microbial transformations of matter in natural processes and in biological treatment systems; South Africa's guidelines for the physical, microbiological and chemical quality of drinking water, within the context of the global guidelines of the World Health Organization.
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HWR 2541: Rural Water Supply & Sanitation The role of water in the community; water, sanitation, hygiene and human health; participatory planning and management of user-choice schemes; alternative rural water supply sources and selection of source; roof and ground catchments of rainwater, their storage and quality preservation; tapping gravity and artesian springs; methods of groundwater withdrawal, including dug wells and infiltration galleries; typical stream-water intake structures, small dams and village ponds; pumps for raising water, including hand-pumps, wind-pumps, hydraulic rams and solar pumps; common water treatment methods; water transmission, storage and distribution; technical and economic options of sanitation systems; participatory hygiene education.
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HWR 2542: Data Information Systems General considerations in water resource evaluation and associated data processing; data types and functional requirements for database management; basic statistical analysis and applications of statistical packages; elementary numerical methods and their relevance to hydrology and water resources; introduction to computer hardware and software, and to their use for the analysis of water resource survey data; basic principles of remote sensing and computer analysis of remotely-sensed data
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HWR 2641: Water Laws & Institutions Legal concepts and the legal framework relating to water as a resource; the property of water and the right to use; regulation of the quantity of surface-water and groundwater; protection of water quality; definition of the concepts and issues in the management of the resource; Water Policy and Law in South Africa; traditional institutional arrangements and alternative institutional structures; decentralization and user participation in technical, financial and administrative operations.
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HWR 2642 : Drought Preparedness & Management Local, regional and global climate variability; climate-related disasters, emphasizing droughts and wind erosion; major drought-afflicted areas, and frequency and causes of droughts; impacts of droughts on water availability and agricultural production in arid and semi-arid zones; long-term planning and early warning systems; drought monitoring and analysis; possibility of cloud seeding; rehabilitation and mitigation activities; local capacity building for community-level preparedness for, and management of, drought.
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HWR 3541: Hydrologic Measurements Hydrometric gauging networks and design considerations, including precipitation, evaporation, stream-flow and groundwater flow networks; rainfall storage gauges and rainfall recorders; sitting the rain-gauge; radar measurement; interpretation of precipitation data and estimation of missing data; double mass analysis; depth-area and depth-area-duration analyses; global geographic variations in precipitation; factors affecting evaporation and transpiration; measurement and computation of reservoir evaporation, transpiration and potential evaporation; stream gauging using manual and recording methods; current-metre measurements of discharge; stage-discharge relationships and extension of rating curves; soil moisture retention, movement and measurement.
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HWR 3542: Atmospheric Dynamics In-depth treatment of gas laws; atmosphere thermodynamics and stability; cloud dynamics and adiabatic charts; atmospheric motion and the governing laws; planetary and secondary circulation; jet streams; vorticity; cyclogenesis; meteorological instruments and their operations; weather maps and data exchange; codes and plotting of charts.
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HWR 3543: Fluid Mechanics Physical properties of water; hydrostatic pressure and forces; hydrodynamic concepts and measurements; flow in pipes and resistance to flow; total head losses and energy gradient lines; types of open channels and measurement of flow; hydraulics of open channel flow; the concepts and computations of specific energy and hydraulic jump.
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HWR 3641: Hydrologic Analysis Relationships between precipitation and runoff; surface retention and runoff mechanisms and components; estimation of the volume of storm runoff; hydrograph analysis and separation; the concept of the unit hydrograph and its derivation; conversion of the unit hydrograph duration; application of unit hydrographs; waves in natural channels and their movement; non-storage routing; flood routing through level-pool reservoirs and river channels; hydraulic routing, its governing equations and numerical solution techniques; types of deterministic models; conceptual catchment modelling; model input parameters, calibration and predictive simulation; limitations of the modelling process.
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HWR 3642: Hydrogeology Geology of groundwater occurrence; properties of aquifers and their determination; heterogeneity and anisotropy as aquifer characteristics; Darcy's Law and its applicability; equations describing groundwater movement; flow lines and flow nets; equilibrium and non-equilibrium hydraulics of wells; geological and geophysical field investigation techniques; hydrogeologic site evaluation; aquifer potential, its safe yield, artificial recharge and the possibility of saline intrusion; groundwater model types and their use and misuse; water well drilling, completion and development; groundwater regions of South Africa.
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HWR 3643: Water Quality Management Chemical, physical and microbiological characteristics of water and wastewater; water quality variables and monitoring; water quality requirements; erosion and sediment yield; solute transport; types and classification of pollutants; legal and institutional framework for water pollution control; standards and regulations; public health and environmental impacts of water pollution; surface-water and groundwater quality modeling.
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HWR 4541: Applied Hydrology Probability distributions, parameter estimation and probability plotting; probability as a hydrologic planning tool; probability of hydrologic events, including flood, runoff volume and precipitation; derivation of return period and regional flood frequency; hydrologic time series; time series analysis and synthesis, and their application; stochastic analysis of rainfall and streamflow; practical problems in hydrologic practice, including floodplain mapping and flood regulation, and the design of urban storm drainage, highway culverts, spillways and cooling ponds.
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HWR 4542: Applied Hydrogeology Principles of groundwater flow; solutions to equations of flow in confined and unconfined aquifers; computation of drawdown due to well pumping in various aquifer settings; determination of aquifer parameters from time-drawdown data under steady-state and non-equilibrium flow conditions; effect of partial well penetration; regional groundwater flow systems under steady-state and transient conditions; groundwater budgets and aquifer management; groundwater modelling and types of published numerical simulation models; finite difference and finite element approaches; data requirements and the accuracy of models; application of groundwater models; general application of hydrogeology to human concerns; business and ethical aspects of hydrogeologic practice.
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HWR 4543: Water Supply Systems Water uses and quantities; water characteristics, quality and treatment; bulk water supply systems and zoning; water demand and design period; types of water transmission conduits; transmission design considerations and hydraulic design; water transmission by pumping; types of distribution systems; design considerations and distribution system design; pipe materials for transmission and distribution; leak detection and control; software packages for design and simulation.
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HWR 4641: Water Resources Management Thematic issues in the sustainability of water resources development, including social issues, institutional issues, planning and coordination issues, environmental issues, technical issues, financial issues and private sector participation; water as an economic good and the conditions and challenges in managing the resource; market conditions and failures, and public policy in resource management; competing uses of water, demand-supply management, and conjunctive use schemes; traditional institutional approach of fragmented management; principles of integrated water resources management as a comprehensive approach to resource management; key elements of integrated management emphasizing inter-generational and intra-generational equity; privatization and user participation in resource management; case studies, especially from the southern Africa region.
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HWR 4642: Applied Meteorology Principles of radar operation and radar remote sensing techniques; types of radar and their applications in meteorology; use of atmospheric data and cloud imagery from satellites for understanding the atmosphere and for weather forecasting.
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HWR 4643: Water Treatment Processes Water storage and off take structures; water aeration, chemical precipitation and ion exchange; storage, preparation and dosing of reagents; rapid and slow mixing; coagulation and flocculation; sedimentation; rapid and slow sand filtration; disinfection; removal of dissolved organic and inorganic solids through ion exchange, membrane technologies, adsorption and chemical oxidation; water stabilization; treatment, disposal and reuse of backwash water and sludge; operation and management of water treatment plants; community-level water purification on a domestic scale.
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HWR 4990: Research Techniques and Project The value and forms of research; ethics in research; problem identification and conceptualization; research and project design; definition of objectives and methodology; hydrologic, hydrogeologic and meteorologic field surveys and data collection; social information gathering and community interfacing; laboratory methods for research; quantitative and qualitative analysis of water resource and related data; cost-effective analysis and evaluation; proposal documentation for, and reporting on, research and project activities; supervised project and preparation and submission of mini-dissertation
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Modules and their contents for MESHWR and PhD (HWR):
Research and Thesis The Department offers both masters and PhD degrees by research and thesis only in the areas of surface water hydrology, hydrogeology, meteorology (including climate change), water resources management and supply, jointly supervised with our collaborative partners in CSIR, DWAF, other related Departments in this University and other academic institutions.
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