Training Course in Watershed Management

7. Study Questions

After completing this training module, and readings of the selected references, you should be able to answer the following study questions.

Precipitation and Interception

1. What are the conditions necessary for precipitation to occur?
2. What are the different precipitation and storm characteristics associated with frontal storm systems, orographic influences, and convective storms?
3. How does vegetation influence the deposition of precipitation?
4. What is the hydrologic importance of interception under different vegetative cover and climatic regimes?
5. What are the potential implications of precipitation chemistry patterns to watershed managers and other stakeholders in the region?

Evapotranspiration and Soil Water Storage

1. What are the different processes of evaporation from a water body, evaporation from a soil, and transpiration from a plant?
2. How can evapotranspiration be estimated by using either a water budget or energy budget method?
3. Under what conditions are potential evapotranspiration and actual evapotranspiration relationships similar? Under what conditions do they differ?
4. How does changes in vegetative cover affect evapotranspiration?

Infiltration, Runoff, and Streamflow

1. How do the soil moisture content, hydraulic conductivity of the soil, soil surface conditions, and presence of impeding layers in the soil profile affect infiltration rates?
2. How do land use activities affect infiltration capacities of a soil through each of the above?
3. How do changes in infiltration capacities result in different flow pathways through a watershed?
4. How can streamflow discharge be determined given velocity and cross-sectional area data?
5. What are the advantages and disadvantages of alternative ways in which streamflow can be measured?

Vegetation Management, Water Yield, Streamflow Patterns

1. What changes in vegetative cover usually result in an increase in the quantity of water yield?
2. What are the exceptions to the above?
3. What methods are available to estimate changes in water yield caused by changes in vegetative cover?
4. What factors are important in determining how much of a given change in water yield from an upstream watershed becomes realized downstream?
5. Does clearcutting of forests cause flooding to increase? If so, explain.
6. In what way do land use activities and environmental change affect hydrologic processes on watersheds, and the ultimate streamflow response? What is the relationship between processes on a watershed and cumulative watershed effects?

Surface Erosion and Control of Erosion on Upland Watersheds

1. What is the process of detachment of soil particles by raindrops and transport by surface runoff?
2. How do land management practices and changes in vegetative cover influence the process of soil detachment?
3. How can surface erosion be controlled, or at least maintained, at acceptable levels? What types of watershed management practices and guidelines are appropriate?

Gully Erosion and Soil Mass Movement

1. How are gullies formed?
2. What are the roles of structural and vegetative measures in controlling gully erosion?
3. What are the different types of soil mass movement and the causes of each?
4. How do different land use impacts, including road construction, timber harvesting, and conversion from deep-rooted to shallowrooted plants, affect both gully erosion and soil mass movement?
5. How would one prioritize the treatment of gullies?

Sediment Yield and Channel Processes

1. What are the different types of sediment transport?
2. What are the relationships between stream capacity and sedimentation?
3. Under what conditions will aggradation and degradation occur in a stream channel?
4. What are the relationships between upland erosion and downstream sediment delivery?
5. What is dynamic equilibrium, and why is it a useful concept when describing stream systems and their stages of development?

Water Quality

1. What is meant by the terms "water quality" and water pollution?"
2. What are the different physical, chemical, and biological pollutants associated with different types of land use that can occur on upland watersheds?
3. How does thermal pollution affect an aquatic ecosystem?
4. How do various silvicultural treatments, range management practices, and associated land use activities affect water quality?
5. Where should sampling locations be located in a water quality monitoring program?

Watershed Management and Multiple Use

1. What is the concept and what are the objectives of multiple use?
2. How can multiple use be implemented? What are the alternative approaches to this implementation?
3. What are the major constraints of implementing multiple use management?
4. What is the role of multiple use in the planning and implementation of a watershed management program?
5. What are the contributions of the concept of multiple use, and of the use of watersheds as systems of analysis, to ecosystem management?

Planning Watershed Management

1. Why is planning important?
2. What is involved in planning for watershed management?
3. What concrete steps need to be taken in the planning process?
4. How does one appraise watershed management plans and projects?

Assessing Economic Impacts of Watershed Management

1. What is the general nature of an economic analysis?
2. What are the specific ways in which an economic analysis is applied to watershed management practices, projects, and programs?
3. In what ways do economists go about the task of developing an economic evaluation?

Riparian Ecosystems

1. What are some of the ecological and hydrological roles that riparian ecosystems can play on a watershed?
2. What is the major function of riparian buffer strips, and how can they be used to manage non-point pollution?
3. In what ways can cumulative effects on a watershed result from losses and gains in riparian ecosystems?

Training Course: Table of Contents | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7