Concepts of groundwater hydrology
-Hydrostratigraphic units
-Saturated zone unsaturated zone
-aquifer, aquiclude
-Hydrodynamic characteristics of aquifer
-Sources of recharge
-Mechanism of recharge
-Groundwater flow
-Groundwater discharge
-Groundwater chemistry/geochemical processes
-Groundwater residence time
-Groundwater-surface water interaction
2. Evapotranspiration
•A process that transfers water from liquid to the vapor state; this occurs as water absorbs heat.
•The energy source is sun.
•Evaporation will proceed until the air becomes saturated with moisture.
•Evaporation is from:
• Evaporation occurs with the rate
dependent on factors such as
o water temperature
o the temperature and humidity of
the layer of air above the water
surface.
o Wind speed is also a factor in
determining the rate at which
vapor is carried away from the
water surface.
Evapotranspiration
• For vegetated surfaces, water is lost by evaporation from bare soil and also by transpiration through the leaf
stomata of plants.
• The term evapotranspiration is used to describe the combination of these effects and is a significant process in
terms of catchment water balances, often being the principal loss of water from a catchment.
• Potential evapotranspiration (PE) is defined as the amount of water that would be removed from a vegetated
surface if sufficient water were available in the soil to meet the water demand. It is an upper limit to the amount
of water an ecosystem will lose by evapotranspiration. The PE may be met in areas where the soil is saturated,
for example after a rainfall event or in an area of high water table, say in a groundwater discharge area.
• PE would occur if the water supply were unrestricted. This occurs when a soil is wet and what evaporation is
able to happen occurs without a lack of water supply.
• PE is dependent on the evaporative capacity of the atmosphere and can be calculated theoretically using
meteorological data.
• Actual evapotranspiration: Because there is often not sufficient water available from soil water for evaporation
and transpiration. Therefore, the term evapotranspiration describe the amount of evapotranspiration that
occurs under field conditions.
• AE is which actually occurs
•When conditions are very wet (e.g.
during wet season Et will equal PE).

•if there is not much available water

(dry season) it will be less than
potential.
Measurement evaporation or evapotranspiration
• In the case of evaporation/evapotranspiration the distinction between
measurement and estimation becomes extremely blurred because
concentrations of gases in the atmosphere are difficult to measure, and
certainly there is no gauge that we can use to measure.
• In reality almost all the techniques used to find an evaporation rate are
estimates, but some are closer to true measurement than others.
• There various techniques but the most common ones are Evaporation pan and
Lysimeter (In the literature you may fined more).
Evaporation pan
• Used to measure free-water evaporation.
• This technique is actually a manipulation of the water balance equation; it is not direct
measurement of evaporation.
• any change in storage is related to either evaporative loss or precipitation gain. E = ΔS-P
(water balance equation)

•Data required:
• daily depth of water, the volume of
water added to replace evaporated
water, and the daily precipitation
into the pan.
Using hydrologic budget , the daily US Class A pan
evaporation can be computed.
Evaporation pan is rarely used in catchment study.
• Pan is filled with water, hence you are measuring Eo, the open water
evaporation.
• There are severe problems with using this value as an indicator of actual
evaporation (Et) in a catchment. The first problem is that Eo will normally
be considerably higher than Et because the majority of evaporation in a
catchment will be occurring over a land surface where the available water
is contained within soil and may be limited.
• This will lead to a large overestimation of the actual evaporation.
• This factor is well know and consequently evaporation pans are rarely used
in catchment water balance studies, although they are useful for
estimating water losses from lakes and reservoirs.
Other problems with pan
• The edge effect due to the size of the pan
 A standard evaporation pan, called a Class A evaporation pan, is 1,207 mm in diameter and 254
mm deep.
 As warm air blows across a body of water it absorbs any water vapour evaporated from the
surface. Evaporation rate is far higher near the edge of the water than towards the centre
where the air is able to absorb less water vapour. The small size of an evaporation pan means
that the whole pan is effectively an ‘edge’ and will have a higher evaporation rate than a much
larger body of water.
• Other smaller problem with evaporation pans is that the sides, and the water inside, will absorb
radiation and warm up quicker than in a much larger lake, providing an extra energy source and
greater evaporation rate.
• For these reasons, observed pan evaporation is multiplied by a factor , pan coefficient, to estimate
reservoir evaporation during the period of observation. (for standard Class A pan a value of 0.6-
0.8, in many cases 0.7 is used).
 Lysimeter
• Takes the same approach to measurement as the evaporation pan, the fundamental difference
being that a lysimeter is filled with soil and vegetation as opposed to water.
• Et rather than Eo is being indirectly measured.
• Use the water balance equation to estimate the evapotranspiration loss. One major difference
from an evaporation pan is that a lysimeter allows percolation through the bottom, although
the amount is measured.
Figure. Large weighing lysimeter at Glendhu
being installed. The weighing mechanism can
be seen
underneath.
Assuming that the only runoff (Q) is
through percolation, the water balance
equation for a lysimeter:
Et = ΔS – P – Q
te: Pan and Lysimeter both uses water balance techniques resulting in accumulated errors and are small
Methods of estimation of evapotranspiration or evaporation from
open waters
• In hydrology we are most interested in Open water evaporation (Eo) and
actual evapotranspiration (Et) which normally require PE to calculate the AE
value.
• Using climatologically variables that are known to influence
evaporation/evapotranspiration scientists developed various sophisticated
estimation Models.
• Almost all the techniques are concerned with estimating the potential
evapotranspiration over a land surface.
• As with most estimation techniques the hydrologist is required to choose the
best techniques for the study situation.
Common models
1. Thornthwaite
• links average air temperature to potential evaporation. This is an inherently sensible link in that
we know air temperature is closely linked to both available energy and the ability of air to
absorb water vapor.
• The first part of the Thornthwaite estimation technique (Thornthwaite, 1944, 1954) derives a
monthly heat index (i) for a region based on theterms
These average
are temperature
then summed tto(°C) for aanmonth.
provide annual heat
index I:

Thornthwaite then derived an equation to provide evaporation estimates based on a series of

observed evaporation measurements:
The a and b terms in this equation can be derived in the following ways. Term b is a
correction factor to account for unequal day length between months. Its value can be
found by looking up tables based on the latitude of your study site. Term a is calibrated as
a cubic function from the I term such as is shown in equation
• Advantage: simple and availability of data.
• Drawbacks: only provides estimates of monthly estimates;
considers only temperature as driving force for the
process.
Penman model
• for estimation of open water evaporation
where

and
Q* = net radiation (in evaporation equivalent units of mm/day)
Δ = rate of increase of the saturation vapour deficit with temperature (kPa/°C)
ᵟe = vapour pressure deficit of the air (kPa)
ϒ= psychrometric constant (≈ 0.063 kPa/°C)
u = wind speed at 2 m elevation (m/s)
For estimation of potential evapotranspiration
over vegetated area
• Although Penman formula looks complicated it is actually simple. It is possible to split the equation in
to two separet parts that conform to the understanding of evaporation.
– The available energy term is predominantly assessed through the net radiation term (Q*).
– Other terms in the equation relate to the ability of the atmosphere to absorb the water vapour
(Δ, ρ, cp, λ, ϒ) and the rate at which diffusion will absorb the water vapour into the atmosphere (k,
u, z, etc).
• When using Penman equation there are only four variables requiring measurement:
net radiation, wind speed above the canopy, atmospheric humidity and
temperature, which when combined will provide vapour pressure deficit. Every other
term in the equation is either a constant, a simple relationship from another
variables.
• Penman equation provides estimates of potential evapotranspiration at a surface for
time intervals much less than the monthly value from Thornthwaite. This makes it
extremely useful to hydrology and it is probably the most widely used for estimating
potential evaporation values
Penman-Monteith
• Monteith (1965) derived a further term for the Penman equation so that actual evaporation
from a vegetated surface could be estimated.
• The new term is canopy resistance term (rc) which is the ability of a vegetation canopy to
control the rate of transpiration. This is achieved through the opening and closing of stomata
within a leaf,
Various researchers have established canopy resistance
values for different vegetation types

The Penman–Monteith equation is probably the best evapotranspiration estimation

method available. However for widespread use there is a need to have the canopy
resistance and aerodynamic resistance terms measured for a range of canopy covers at
different stages of growth.
Reference evapotranspiration
• To overcome data limitation of Penman-Monteith the idea of reference evapotranspiration has
been introduced.
• This is the evapotranspiration from a particular vegetation surface and the evapotranspiration
rate for another surface is related to this by means of crop-coefficients.
• The best surface for reference evapotranspiration is close cropped, well-watered grass
(decided by FAO experts). This is described as a hypothetical reference crop with an assumed
crop height of 0.12 m, a fixed canopy resistance of 70 s/m and an albedo of 0.23.
• Using these fixed values within the Penman–Monteith equation the reference evaporation (ETo
in mm/day) can be calculated from
Where
Q* is net radiation at the crop surface (MJ/m2/day)
QG is soil heat flux density (MJ/m2/day)
u is wind speed at 2 m height (m/s) T is mean daily air temperature at 2 m height (°C)
ᵟe is the saturation vapour pressure deficit (kPa)
Δ is the slope of the vapour pressure curve (kPa/°C)
ϒ is the psychrometric constant (kPa/°C)
At the simplest level the evapotranspiration for a particular crop can be estimated by multiplying
the crop coefficient with the reference evapotranspiration
Simple estimation of Et from PE and soil moisture
• Where there is no stomatal control exerted by plants (e.g. in a pasture) the
relationship between actual evaporation (Et) and potential evaporation (PE) is
driven by the availability of water.
• The availability of water can be estimated from the soil moisture content.
At a simple level it is possible
to estimate the relationship
between potential and actual
evaporation using soil
moisture content as a
measured variable
Introducing Depth-Area-Duration analysis
• helps to understand relation among depth and area of rainfall of particular
duration.
• The longer duration rainfall the more it covers a wider area. Short time
rainfalls normally cover small areas.
• Rainfall rarely occurs uniformly over a large area; variations in total depth
of fall occur from the centers to the peripheries of storms. The further
away we are from the rainfall centre, the less rainfall we observe.
• Knowing such parameters of rainfall, how the depth is varying over the
area, is very important for engineers who design water structures such as
bridges and culverts, and irrigation structures for estimations and
calculations of design flows.
 • Generally this information is illustrated in graphs indicating the rainfall depth in a specific
area for a specific duration.

•Average depth of rainfall decreases from the maximum The average depths of rainfall are plotted against the
as the area considered increases. areas up to the encompassing isohyets.