ABSTRACT:

This resource includes materials to introduce students in an introductory hydrology or earth science class to the concept of a water balance using active learning. Included are a short powerpoint presentation, a link to an interactive web app, and a set of example activities that use the web app. The web app, which runs well on a smartphone or desktop, runs a monthly Thornthwaite-type water balance for any of thousands of sites across the United States for either of two NOAA climate normals periods and presents the results in a series of plots. Once a site and period are chosen, users can make a variety of changes to the site data to run simulations. For example, users can change the available soil water capacity, latitude, precipitation, and/or temperature data for the site. Additionally, users can output the raw data from the app to use in external programs for additional analysis or plotting in more advanced courses. Three activities that explore the water balance using the app are included in the activities document. These are provided for direct use in classrooms, as sets of questions to chose from, or as inspiration for new activities. If you create additional activities that use the app, please let the authors know!

ABSTRACT:

The linked bookdown contains the notes and most exercises for a course on data analysis techniques in hydrology using the programming language R. The material will be updated each time the course is taught. If new topics are added, the topics they replace will remain, in case they are useful to others.

I hope these materials can be a resource to those teaching themselves R for hydrologic analysis and/or for instructors who may want to use a lesson or two or the entire course. At the top of each chapter there is a link to a github repository. In each repository is the code that produces each chapter and a version where the code chunks within it are blank. These repositories are all template repositories, so you can easily copy them to your own github space by clicking *Use This Template* on the repo page.

In my class, I work through the each document, live coding with students following along.Typically I ask students to watch as I code and explain the chunk and then replicate it on their computer. Depending on the lesson, I will ask students to try some of the chunks before I show them the code as an in-class activity. Some chunks are explicitly designed for this purpose and are typically labeled a “challenge.”

Chapters called ACTIVITY are either homework or class-period-long in-class activities. The code chunks in these are therefore blank. If you would like a key for any of these, please just send me an email.

If you have questions, suggestions, or would like activity answer keys, etc. please email me at jpgannon at vt.edu

Finally, if you use this resource, please fill out the survey on the first page of the bookdown (https://forms.gle/6Zcntzvr1wZZUh6S7). This will help me get an idea of how people are using this resource, how I might improve it, and whether or not I should continue to update it.

ABSTRACT:

The following data are 10-minute temporal resolution stream discharge and temperature measurements for a ~43 ha steep headwater catchment in western North Carolina, USA.