Learning Hydrology

The 
idea is you want to get a volume per time,

so you want to figure out how much water is
moving past a point in time.

And to do that, this is my little picture
of a cross section of a stream; you need to

know the velocity, the depth, and the width.

There’s a pipe behind that plate, so that
plate tells you how high the water is.

That pipe behind it is called a crest stage
gage, so what that is, there is some cork

in there, like really fine cork like from
a wine bottle but they ground it up really

fine.

So when the water comes up, and during a big
flood event it keeps coming up, the cork will

float on the water and it will keep going
until the water reaches the top.

The cork will then stay at that high place
in the pipe and the water will come back down.

We are going to divide up now I think and
half of us are going to go upstream and take

a discharge measurement, the other half will
stay here and do water quality.

This little device, you’re going to put
in the width and the depth and it will measure

the velocity.

And now you’re going to go “set location”
“Set location” and that is 5ft.

Five yeah.

It tells you what your ending edge and we
say eighteen and then you say calculate discharge.

It says 21.6.