3 hours. 2 hours lecture and 3 hours lab per week.
Natural Resources Engineering
Creativity & Innovation
Leadership & Collaboration
Course Description
Engineering hydrology, soil erosion, introduction to open
channel design, runoff estimations and calculations, engineered
containment structures, landscape-scale water distribution, and
non-point water quality.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students: Graduate students must complete all requirements of
undergraduate students plus additional readings assigned by
the instructor, additional exam questions based on these
readings, and development of an in-depth, watershed-scale plan
for managing nonpoint source pollution and restoring water
quality as a capstone project. The project will be presented in
a final report.
Athena Title
Natural Resources Engineering
Undergraduate Pre or Corequisite
ENGR 3160 or ENGR 3160E
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student learning Outcomes
Students will understand why natural resources engineering is important to society.
Students will understand concepts and principles of hydrology.
Students will understand foundations of water quality.
Students will understand the use of basic engineering containment structures for managing stormwater and preserving land system integrity.
Students will understand concepts of ecological indicators with respect to stream and watershed systems.
Students will understand the impacts and effects of land disturbance, soil erosion, and uncontrolled water flow on human and ecological systems.
Students will predict precipitation for specified frequency and duration of storms.
Students will estimate runoff volume and peak runoff rate for design.
Students will compute infiltration volumes.
Students will generate runoff hydrographs.
Students will estimate erosion losses and analyze erosion runoff.
Students will design vegetated waterways and channels with specified lining materials.
Students will apply engineering standards to hydrology and land system problems.
Students will assess watershed conditions using ecological and hydrologic metrics.
Students will characterize land use for application to engineering problem solving.
Students will apply modern engineering tools to conduct hydrologic analysis of pre- and post-development land disturbing activities and design a control structure to manage runoff.
Students will be able to analyze the impact of natural resources engineering on the physical, organizational, and/or social environment. Students learn this skill through in-class instruction and guided case study analysis of natural resources engineering projects and their consequences for affected communities; assigned readings and structured class discussion on engineering ethics, stakeholder interests, and the global and societal context of engineering solutions; and site-specific design assignments in which students identify the populations and systems affected by their design, evaluate the environmental, economic, and social consequences of their decisions, and defend those decisions in written and oral form.
Students will be able to synthesize unique hydrological conditions of a chosen site with pre-/post-development land disturbing activities to creatively design control structures to manage runoff. The course emphasizes the process of creativity and innovation by requiring students to generate and evaluate multiple alternative control-structure configurations for the same site, explore unconventional approaches, and refine their concepts through successive iterations informed by instructor feedback and peer review. The course culminates in an original stormwater management design for a student-selected site, producing a new design product created by the student rather than reproduced from a worked example.
Students will be able to plan, initiate, manage, complete, and evaluate a stormwater management project as a member of a group or as a group leader. The course assists students in developing leadership and collaboration skills through an iterative, semester-long process. Student teams establish roles, responsibilities, and a project plan at the outset, then submit staged deliverables at multiple checkpoints. At each checkpoint students receive instructor feedback and complete structured peer and self-evaluations of team functioning and individual contribution. Students use that feedback to correct course, renegotiate roles, and revise their deliverables, allowing measurable improvement in both the project and their individual leadership and teamwork practices over time.
Topical Outline
Hydrologic cycle: Precipitation
Hydrologic cycle: Infiltration
Hydrologic cycle: Evaporation
Hydrologic cycle: Runoff
Engineering hydrology: Watershed systems, assessment, and delineation
Engineering hydrology: Design storms and precipitation analysis
Engineering hydrology: Runoff analysis
Engineering hydrology: SCS method
Engineering hydrology: Rational method
Engineering hydrology: Peak discharge
Engineering hydrology: Runoff hydrographs
Soil Erosion
Water Quality: Nonpoint and point sources of water pollution
Open channel flow: Manning’s equation
Open channel flow: Vegetated waterways
Open channel flow: Flood routing
Landscape-scale containment structures: Detention and retention
Engineering design standards for stormwater: Water quality
Engineering design standards for stormwater: Channel protection
Engineering design standards for stormwater: Overbank flooding
Engineering design standards for stormwater: Extreme flooding
Design of control structures to manage runoff and peak discharge
Conservation and bioremediation in the environment
Institutional Competencies Learning Outcomes
Creativity & Innovation
The capacity to combine or synthesize existing ideas, images, or expertise in original ways and the experience of thinking, reacting, and working in an imaginative way characterized by innovation, divergent thinking, and risk taking.
Leadership & Collaboration
The capacity to engage in the relational process of optimizing personal and collective strengths toward a common goal.
