OPTION 2

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The EU aims to help students gain practical experience and develop a high-level perspective on hydrological modeling of watersheds dominated by agricultural activities and affected by climate change. The EU’s approach is based on four key perspectives:

1. Watershed hydrology and its place in the history of science,

2. Characteristics of Agricultural Landscapes and Implications for Modeling,

3. The issue of changing scales,

4. Practice and Critique of Hydrological Modeling.

The EU will provide advanced knowledge on production functions, transfer functions, and global and distributed modeling. It will enable students to independently apply various hydrological models (Green and Ampt, reservoir, Curve Number, unit hydrograph, reservoir cascade, etc.) and to gain a broader perspective on the parameterization, calibration, and validation of hydrological models.

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The status of a watercourse, as defined by the WFD, comprises two aspects: chemical status and ecological status. To define ecological status, several parameters must be taken into account, including those related to the water volume (as measured by flow rate) of the watercourse. In this course unit, students will conduct field or laboratory measurements to determine some of the key parameters used to assess the status of a watercourse or, more generally, in hydrological studies (floods, resource assessment, etc.).

Four topics will be covered:

- the Hydrometry component, involving the use of various flow measurement techniques (point-by-point method with an electromagnetic current meter, ADCP, dilution method, float gauging, and radar).

- the soil hydrodynamics component, involving the use of several infiltrometry methods to determine conductivity at saturation, as well as the collection of soil cylinders to determine, after drying, the porosity, dry density, and soil moisture content.

- the Hydrochemistry component, which includes:

• a field component (sampling and analysis using a multiparameter meter and a field spectrophotometer) for physicochemical parameters (temperature, electrical conductivity, pH, dissolved oxygen, TAC, PO4, and NO3, etc.)
• a laboratory portion (analysis and quantification of 4-tert-octylphenol in a surface water sample, using gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS)) to determine the presence of trace amounts of emerging contaminants from the alkylphenol ethoxylate (APEO) family, compounds found in products such as detergents, emulsifiers, and solubilizers.

- the hydrobiology component, which takes into account the presence or absence of certain species—fish, invertebrates, macrophytes (aquatic plants), and diatoms (single-celled algae)—in order to determine specific indices (IPR, IBGN, IBMR, IBD) related to the biological quality of the watercourse.

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This course focuses on natural mineral waters and thermal waters, whose unique properties and characteristics make them special resources in terms of the exploitation, management, and protection of their deposits. Students will thus be trained in the specific technical and regulatory/health aspects governing the exploitation of these resources, particularly through presentations by industry professionals and a visit to an exploitation site. They will also gain an understanding of the management and protection of this type of aquifer so that they can propose field study protocols to characterize and protect these resources, thereby acquiring hydrogeological expertise specific to this type of aquifer.

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This course unit is designed to enable students to acquire the skills necessary for collecting hydrometric data (in the broadest sense) in the field and to apply those skills to various types of case studies, with the goal of carrying out an engineering or research project in hydrogeology.

This learning unit consists of two parts:

• A first week spent entirely in the field in the Pyrénées-Orientales department;
• A second week spent in the classroom, dedicated to compiling, analyzing, and interpreting the data collected in the field.

During the^first week, the first three days are devoted to acquiring various technical skills in hydrometry (in the broad sense) in the field, so that students can then take the lead during the last two days, when they will work on a case study to be solved in project groups. They will then be divided among two experimental sites where the projects will be carried out. The topics will be presented in greater detail at the beginning of the internship so that the pre-defined groups can propose an experimental protocol to be conducted on-site, enabling them to solve their problem. The supervising team will approve the proposed protocols the day before the experiments begin.

During the^second week, students will analyze the data they collected during their fieldwork project and divide up the various analyses and interpretations of that data among themselves in order to prepare a presentation and a report that integrates and summarizes all of these results, which will be used to evaluate their work.

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