SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
SPRING 2006
M.S. COMPREHENSIVE EXAM:   WATER RESOURCES

Name: _____________________ Red ID No. ________________ Grade: _______


Instructions: 2 hours. Closed book, closed notes. Write a 300-word statement per question. Answer 5 questions only. Use engineering paper. When you are finished, staple your work in sequence, and return this sheet with your work.

  1. Describe the impact of human development on the Earth's climate. Describe how changes in albedo can cause changes in precipitation. How does the albedo of a desert compare to that of a rain forest?

  2. Describe the relationship between surface water and groundwater with regards to baseflow augmentation. What watershed management practices contribute to baseflow augmentation? What practices do not? How is baseflow related to climate?

  3. Describe the contributions of Cunge to flood routing. For what applications is the Muskingum-Cunge method better than the Muskingum method? For what applications it is not? Why is the Courant number important in flood-wave modeling?

  4. Contrast the concepts of stability and convergence in the context of numerical modeling of water-resources problems. Why was Li's unconditionally stable kinematic-wave scheme bound to fail? What is an amplitude/phase portrait?

  5. Why are wetlands important in society? What is redox potential? How does it relate to wetlands? How does redox potential vary as biodegradation progresses in a wetland? What is methanogenesis? Why is methanogenesis important?

  6. How does geology, geomorphology, hydrology, and ecology relate to each other in hydraulic and hydrologic analysis? Focus on the Parana-Paraguay waterway to provide and example of the interaction. Be specific. What is the most important hydraulic variable from the standpoint of runoff diffusion? What is the maximum flood time-of-rise in a natural system?