Friday random hydrology news

• Journal of Hydrology published a rather odd authors testimonials webpage. The testimonials are just one sentence snippets from a variety of authors (e.g. ”Quality reviewing and speed of processing” – China). Strangely, the author’s country is posted immediately after each testimonial; nearly all come from Chinese, Indian, and Iranian authors. I wonder if JoH is targeting authors specifically from these countries.

• Former Director of Utah Water Research Lab Dies from COVID-19. L. Douglas James authored a paper in Volume 1 Issue 1 of Water Resources Research (1965). Here’s the abstract:

A workable procedure is devised for incorporating optimal amounts of nonstructural measures in flood‐control planning, determining proper project timing, and providing review as new developments unfold. Optimality is based on the economic efficiency criterion, or minimizing the sum of the four flood control cost components: flood damage, structural measure cost, the cost of floodproofing, and the cost of land use adjustment. Optimum timing is estimated by minimizing independently the total cost in successive 10‐year stages. Periodic review is obtained as the plan for each upcoming stage is reviewed before it is applied. The technique was used to analyze a small watershed in Sacramento County, California, and it produced a flood‐control program significantly less costly than that obtained by current procedures. Structural measures for flood control were found most applicable at the two extremes of extensive agricultural or urban damages. Nonstructural measures were favored in situations involving rapidly expanding urban development suffering fairly frequent flooding or unusually costly structural measure construction. Residual flood damages were found to increase with time even after the optimum combination of structural and nonstructural measures was applied.

Full article here. I couldn’t find a version that isn’t paywalled.