AGU Hydrology Section Research Articles

AGU Hydrology Section Committees

The following is a list of officers and committee members.President: R. Allan Freeze, Department of Geological Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada (telephone: 604‐228‐6462) (Sabbatical address: August 1, 1984–May 31, 1985; Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 (telephone: 602‐621‐7609)).

AGU Hydrology Section

The Executive Committee of the AGU Hydrology Section met in regular session at 4:00 P.M. on Thursday, December 8, 1983, in Room 378 of the Cathedral Hill Hotel, San Francisco, Calif. Seven board members were present with section president, Peter Eagleson, presiding.A total of 18 sessions were presented in San Francisco, and all were well attended, as was reported by program chairman Dennis Lettenmaier. Added to the regular sessions of General Hydrology, General Ground‐water Hydrology, and Sediment Transport were the following special sessions: Glacier Ocean Interaction, presider Edward Josberger; Orinoco and the Amazon, presider Edward Andrews; Transport and Geochemical Interactions in Stream Water, presider F. E. Bencola; Instream Flow Requirements for Fish, presider Brian W. Mar; Multivariate Modeling of Hydrologic and Other Geophysical Time Series, presiders Jose D. Salas and David R. Dawdy; Optimization Techniques for Managing Ground Water and Stream Aquifer Systems, presider Steve Gorelick; Treatment of Evapotranspiration Soil Moisture Evolution and Aquifer Recharge in Watershed Models, presiders Arlen D. Feldman and Hubert J. Morel‐Seytoux; Statistical Procedures for Estimating of Flood Risk at Gauged Sites, presider J. R. Stedinger; and Searching for More Physically Based Extreme Value Distributions in Hydrology, presider Juan B. Valdes. The session on Glacier Ocean Interaction received the most publicity, with numerous accounts of some of the presentations appearing in the newspaper. One of the pleasant surprises of the meetings was the high attendance at the special sessions on Optimization Techniques for Managing Ground Water and Stream Aquifer Systems and Multivariate Modeling of Hydrologic and Other Geophysical Time Series. Both sessions were highly interdisciplinary, attracting numerous scientists from other sections of AGU.

History of Hydrology

“History of Hydrology: Earth Science Aspects” is the subject of a half‐day symposium at the 1984 AGU Fall Meeting (December 3–7, 1984, San Francisco). The symposium is being organized by the new History and Heritage of Hydrology Committee (HHHC) of AGU's Hydrology Section (a committee which will also function as a subgroup of the AGU Committee on the History of Geophysics). The symposium will cover historical aspects of the geological and geochemical study of surface and groundwater. Because this is a first‐time effort by the HHHC, no initial restrictions on scope have been imposed in order to span a range of interests and to identify a population of individuals with historical interests within AGU and the hydrology community in general.

Hydrology at the Spring Meeting

A special, full‐day session on “Investigation of Mesoscale Precipitation Fields” is being organized by the precipitation committee of AGU's Hydrology Section for the 1984 AGU Spring Meeting under the joint sponsorship of the Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences sections. This session will contain about 10 invited talks by hydrologists, atmospheric scientists, statisticians, and mathematicians, with a new focus on interdisciplinary research in modeling precipitation fields. In the evening, a 2‐hour panel discussion will be held to explore in depth the scope of interdisciplinary research and climatic variability. For additional details contact: Vijay K. Gupta, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Univ. of Mississippi, University, MS 38677 (telephone 601‐232‐5366).

Robert E. Horton Award winners

The Robert E. Horton Award is given annually by the AGU Hydrology Section for a single outstanding contribution to the science of hydrology made within the last 5 years. The 1983 award winner is David A. Woolhiser for his contributions in the area of kinematic modeling of surface water runoff and overland flow (Eos, January 17, 1984, p . 22).

Welcome to WaterWatch

With this issue we inaugurate WaterWatch, which is intended to bring news of water and of AGU's Hydrology Section to all readers of Eos at least every 3 months. One member of each of the Hydrology Section's technical committees is serving as a topical reporter, feeding information to Mary Anderson, editor of Eos for hydrology, but that is not enough. Quarterly publication of a substantial feature will require the active participation of many more. I appeal to all members of the Hydrology Section to provide Man Anderson with newsworthy items.

Reply [to “Registering hydrologists: An exchange”

The Executive Committee of AGU's Hydrology Section has considered the question of certification for hydrologists (Eos, September 13, 1983, p. 554). It has concluded that the existing certification procedures having the backing of state or federal legislation (Professional Engineer or Professional Geologist) are currently adequate to satisfy society's needs for protection from unprofessional practiceThe committee recognizes however that there may be some hydrologists, particularly those whose education has been in forestry or in agriculture, who may not qualify for certification under the existing procedures and for whom certification might have some economic advantage.

Geophysicists

Steve H. Blair, a specialist in surface water hydrology, has been appointed a senior hydrologist in the Phoenix office of Dames & Moore, engineering and environmental consultants. Recently, he has been responsible for the hydrologic design of several large dams in Arizona, New Mexico, and California.Several AGU members recently were elected to the National Academy of Engineering. They are Jan D. Achenbach, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the Technological Institute, Northwestern University; Peter S. Eagleson, president‐elect of the AGU Hydrology Section and professor of civil engineering at the Ralph M. Parsons Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Allyn C. Vine, oceanographer and senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Mass.

The U.S. educational effort in unsaturated zone hydrology

The region of the earth below the land surface and above the water‐saturated zone plays a major role in determining the behavior of hydrologic systems. To help educators and other interested individuals evaluate and continue molding the U.S. educational effort in the hydrology of the unsaturated zone, the AGU Hydrology Section Committee on Water in the Unsaturated Zone conducted a study of the number and level of university educational programs involved in unsaturated zone hydrology.The basis for this report was the questionnaire shown here as Figure 1. A total of 189 questionnaires were sent to departments in schools of engineering, earth science, and agriculture. Nine of the 114 returns were rejected because of mistakes or duplication. The remaining 105 could be divided almost half and half into those from departments in schools of engineering and schools of earth science (58) and those from schools of agriculture (47).