HYD 252: Hillslope Geomorphology and Sediment Budgets

Instructor:

Greg Pasternack, Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources

Course Description:

Theoretical and empirical foundations of sediment production on hillslopes will be explored using computer models and field experiments to promote an understanding of how watersheds evolve naturally and with human impacts.

Course Availability:

This course is taught on an infrequent basis depending on student demand and competing requirements for undergraduate teaching. I anticipate it will be taught next in the spring of 2018.

Student Learning Objectives:

1. Students can explain how it is possible for landscapes comprised of complex topographic patterns to erode at the same rate in all areas.
2. Students can derive the equations that govern landscape erosion process thresholds (i.e., soil creep, sheet wash erosion, channelization, and shallow landsliding) for a setting with thin soils over shallow bedrock and assuming steady state hydrology.
3. Students can discuss, explain, and compute where channels begin.
4. Students can classify rivers on the basis of reach-scale attributes and interpretation of alluvial and bedrock channel processes.
5. Students can conceptualize and write a sediment balance equation for different landscape settings on Earth accounting for sediment storage and flux components.
6. Students can understand and account for how climate, tectonics, biota, and anthropogenic impacts influence the sediment budget and sediment yield for diverse landscape settings on Earth.
7. Students can describe the underpinnings of landscape evolution modeling, including assumptions and limitations.
8. Students can use concepts from landscape evolution modeling to discuss and interpret how different forces will affect sediment production, erosion, storage, and export from a catchment.

Course Reader: 

List of Readings

Special Announcements:

We are ON for spring 2018.

Copyright Greg Pasternack 2000.

All federal and state copyrights reserved for all original material presented in this course through any medium, including lecture or print. Individuals are prohibited from being paid for taking, selling, or otherwise transferring for value, personal class notes made during this course to any entity without the express written permission of Greg Pasternack. In addition to legal sanctions, students found in violation of these prohibitions may be subject to University disciplinary action.