Lecture

Tracers and Transit Time Distributions

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In course

ENV-221: Hydrology for engineers

This is an introductory course to key concepts and methods in physical and engineering hydrology. ...

Description

This lecture introduces hydrologic transport, focusing on water travel time within a catchment and solute transport. It covers various scales of the problem, examples of water pollution, and the EU WATER FRAMEWORK directive. The lecture discusses the EU directive's implementation, water quality protection, and Swiss water bodies' status. It explores methods to infer water transit times, including the long-term mean transit time concept. The lumped convolution approach and tracer breakthrough curves are also explained, along with stable isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen. The lecture concludes with the age balance in hydrologic systems and the water age balance, showcasing model results and age variability during wet and dry periods.

Instructors (3)

Andrea Rinaldo

Paolo Benettin

I was born in Padova, Italy, in 1986. After high school, I started the Environmental Engineering program at the University of Padova (Bachelor and Master), where I followed the 'soil protection' curriculum. During my Master studies I spent a semester as Erasmus student at Wageningen University (Wageningen, the Netherlands) to follow courses in Hydrology. After graduation, I decided to bring my education further and I started a Ph.D. at the civil and environmental engineering department at the University of Padova. My Ph.D. thesis focused on hydrologic transport and travel time distributions at the catchment scale. My contribution to the subject included both new theoretical formulations and extensive numerical applications to real catchments. During my Ph.D., I also spent 7 months as visiting research fellow at Virginia Tech University (Blacksburg, USA). Since I arrived at EPFL as post-doc in 2015, I started being involved in field and experimental activities, which allowed me to learn about practical experimental problems. In 2017 I had the opportunity to by hired by the ECHO laboratory as a permanent scientist, conducting research in the field of catchment hydrology.

Sara Bonetti

Expertise Ecohydrological and geomorphological modeling Education PhD | Civil and Environmental Engineering 2018 – 2018 Duke University Teaching & PhD PhD Students Benjamin Andre De Blois Kargere, Qiming Sun, Frédéric Laurent Lardet, Taiqi Lian, Felix Bauer Courses Ecohydrological modeling ENV-411 This course provides the theoretical basis for understanding and modeling the interactions between the hydrologic cycle, vegetation, soil, climate, and human society. Hydrology

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