EU CHOICE 2-1

The EU aims to support students in gaining practical experience and a high-level perspective on hydrological modeling of watersheds dominated by agricultural activities and subject to climate change. The EU's approach is based on four key points:

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

2. Specific features of agricultural landscapes and implications for modeling,

3. Issues surrounding scale change,

4. Practice and critique of hydrological modeling.

The EU will provide advanced knowledge on production functions, transfer functions, global and distributed modeling. It will guide students toward the independent use of various hydrological models (Green and Ampt, reservoir, Curve Number, unit hydrograph, cascade of reservoirs, etc.) and toward taking a step back to consider the parameterization, calibration, and validation of hydrological models.

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

Four topics will be addressed:

- Hydrometry, using various gauging techniques (point-by-point method with electromagnetic current meter, ADCP, dilution method, float gauging, radar).

- Soil hydrodynamics, using several infiltration methods to determine saturation conductivity, and soil cylinder sampling to determine porosity, dry density, and soil water content after drying.

- Hydrochemistry, including:

• fieldwork (sampling and analysis using a multiparameter meter and a field spectrophotometer) for physical and chemical parameters (temperature, electrical conductivity, pH, dissolved oxygen, TAC, PO4, and NO3, etc.)
• a laboratory component (analysis and quantification of the presence 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.

- Hydrobiology, taking into account the presence or absence of certain species: fish, invertebrates, macrophytes (aquatic plants), and diatoms (unicellular algae), in order to determine specific indices (IPR, IBGN, IBMR, IBD) relating to the biological quality of the watercourse.

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