Surface waters

Abstract

Much recent progress in predicting surface water flows from natural watersheds for engineering purposes has been stimulated by the advent of the computer and the various theories of systems modeling, common nowadays to all branches of the physical and biological sciences. Much of the science of hydrology as traditionally viewed is being reordered and redefined in terms of the emerging language of computer science. Thus we nave linear, nonlinear, parametric, dynamic, stochastic, lumped, and distributed hydrologies; physical and conceptual models; systems and decision theories; and so on. In hydrology, these approaches are so far applied chiefly to the prediction of rates of water discharge from reservoirs, channels, and land surfaces and to the routing of water through downstream areas. Several substantial renews of mathematical methodologies in hydrology, particularly those of Kisiel, Eagleson, and Amorocho, are contained in The Progress of Hydrology [University of Illinois, 1969]. Because the broad subject of systems hydrology has been so well summarized In this recent three‐volume set, The Progress of Hydrology, systems nydrology need not be dealt with at any length here.