Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 1.1
Pictorial representation of hydrological cycle
The interdisciplinary science of hydrology is closely connected with human
society and life of living beings, as water is the vital resource for survival. All kinds
of personal, domestic, recreational, industrial, agricultural, luxurious needs of
human society are closely connected with water usage and management. On the
other hand, water poses serious threats to humanity in many forms, such as
oods,
drought, climatic change. This situation points to the necessity of a strong rela-
tionship between human society and water resources, through effective and prac-
tical applications of development, planning and management of this precious
natural resource. Though, the process appears very simple from the outside, the
subject is very vast and complex, due to the huge variety of processes involved,
occurrence of these processes in different temporal and spatial scales and their
interactive response on and with other environmental components. For the purposes
of simpli
cation and gaining a detailed insight into the hydrological details of the
processes, hydrological models were introduced in the early second half of the 20th
century with conceptual representations of the whole or a part of the hydrologic
cycle.
