Principles of Soil and Water Engineering

Catalog description

BE 307 focuses on utilization and engineering of soil-water resources, including rainfall-runoff, soil-water movement, erosion/sediment transport and flow processes. For each topic, the significance, underlying principles and equations will be covered, along with further exploration in a practical and experiential mode with class participants sharing in problem formulation, team problem solving, discussions, lab activities, and explanations/presentations. Students will be exposed to map use, representative soil profiles, cropping-management systems, and watershed-scale settings. Lab activities will sequentially build from one lab period to the next, showing how each stage of soil and water engineering is used to develop a more complete watershed-type project. As appropriate, field trips will be scheduled so as to show course participants the practical settings in which basic soil and water engineering principles can be applied. The course will serve as preparation for the senior-level soil and water engineering design courses in the Natural Resources Engineering Option of the Biological Engineering (BE) major.