Quick Access:
- Best general hydrology courses: The Water Cycle, Stream Ecology
- Best water sustainability courses: The Global Crisis, Watershed Management, Hydrology and Sustainability
- Best courses on technology and water: Water Resources Engineering, Using Python, Mapping Hydrological Basins
Growing up on a farm in Australia, I was taught from a young age to be aware of the precious resource that is water. My father constantly checked the sky and read the clouds and wildlife behaviors for signs of rain, wind, and storms.
As the world’s human population continues to increase, water and sanitation issues are becoming more critical. Many lakes, rivers, and groundwater sources are already facing unsustainable pressure. Learn about the distribution, movement, and management of water with the best hydrology courses in this Best Courses Guide (BCG).
Click on the shortcuts for more details:
- Top Picks
- Why Trust Us and This Guide
- Methodology
- What is Hydrology?
- Courses Overview
- Other Sites
- People Also Ask
Why Trust Us and This Guide
Class Central, a Tripadvisor for online education, has helped 100 million learners find their next course. We’ve been combing through online education for more than a decade to aggregate a catalog of 250,000 online courses and 250,000 reviews written by our users. And we’re online learners ourselves: combined, the Class Central team has completed hundreds of online courses, including online degrees.
I’ve researched and written Best Courses Guides for fifty subjects including Meteorology, Climate Change, Geology, and Ecology. I have personally completed over 200 online courses in a variety of topics, so I know what makes a good online course.
Methodology
Trying to find “the best” can be daunting, even for those of us who live and breathe online courses. Here’s how I approached this task.
First, I combed through Class Central’s Catalog and the internet to find a variety of free and paid open courses, some with certificates.
When choosing courses, I looked for recognized institutions and instructors with extensive experience and engaging styles. I checked numbers of enrollments and views to find popular courses and read learner reviews (when available) to get a sense of the quality of each course. I examined courses that covered a range of topics and presentation styles, including the basics and more advanced topics and watched some course videos to sample courses I hadn’t already taken. Then I chose top courses from various sub-fields.
Ultimately, I used a combination of data and my own judgment to make these picks.
Here are my top picks. Click on one to skip to the course details:
What is Hydrology?
Hydrology is the study of the distribution, movement, and management of water, which is vital for life. Hydrologists monitor water levels, water flow, rainfall and sediment. Because of increasing pressures due to population growth and changing rainfall and evaporation patterns due to climate change, hydrology is a dynamic and expanding field.
Hydrology is relevant to a range of careers in engineering hydrology and environmental science, groundwater (hydrogeology), water infrastructure (drinking water and wastewater), hydropower, mining (runoff and drainage), agriculture (irrigation and soil water management), watershed management, and flood management (forecasting and mitigation).
Hydrologists can work in government, public and private authorities, research, consultancy, international organizations, academia, utility companies, and associated industries such as infrastructure and equipment manufacture.
Courses Overview
- All of these courses are free or free to audit
- 2 courses offer a certificate of completion. One of these is free
- The Hydrology subject is followed by 2K learners on Class Central
- Courses in this guide have more than 250K enrollments and views
- The most featured provider is YouTube with 4 courses.
Best General Hydrology Course (PepsiCo)
The Water Cycle is a comprehensive hydrology program. It is divided into ten modules, providing a thorough understanding of both natural water processes and the complexities of managing water resources in a sustainable manner.
Syllabus:
- Introduction to the water cycle
- Basics of hydrology
- Understanding groundwater and models
- Human impacts on freshwater ecosystems
- Water governance and law
- Economics of water infrastructure
- Scenario planning for municipal water systems
- Course completion and review
Related courses by Pepsico are Water Governance & Economics (10-11 hours) and Water Security & Stewardship (9 hours). These courses are completely free and do not offer a certificate.
If you have taken Coursera courses before, you may notice the user interface is somewhat different for this course. Instead of the steps being labelled “Video”, “Reading” etc, most are “Ungraded Plugin”, which could be a video, slides to click on, or a link. Or even combined steps, with a couple of videos in a single plugin. In my view, this format is more cumbersome.
| Provider | Coursera |
| Institution | PepsiCo |
| Instructors | Erin Wilson, John Sabo |
| Workload | 10 hours |
| Cost | Free |
| Certificate | Not available |
Best Comprehensive Tutorial on Hydrology and Sustainability (NPTEL and IIT, Kharagpur)
Water, Society, and Sustainability delves into the intricate relationship between water resources, societal needs, and sustainability practices. It covers a broad spectrum of topics, from the basic understanding of hydrology to the socio-political implications of water management in both historical and contemporary contexts, with a special focus on South Asian experiences. The video series aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of water’s role in society and the environment, emphasizing sustainable practices and the importance of integrating social sciences with hydrological studies.
Syllabus overview:
Introduction to water and society
- Setting the context
- Beyond hydrology
- Socio hydrology
- Political ecology of water
- Hydrosocial
- Critical physical geography (CPG)
Historical perspectives and techniques
- The South Asian context
- Water harvesting and water use techniques in ancient India
- Water technology in medieval India
- Colonial hydrology
Contemporary issues and case studies
- Dams and development in contemporary India
- The Farakka barrage project: historical, technical, and socio-environmental details
- Urban waters: historical and political ecological perspectives
- Peri-urban water justice in the global south
- Transforming trajectories of blue infrastructures of Kolkata
“Dr. Mukherjee, this is such a timely course primarily because of the interdisciplinary nature embedded in the design of the course…” @radha63, YouTube learner.
| Institution | NPTEL and Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur |
| Provider | YouTube |
| Instructor | Prof. Jenia Mukherjee |
| Workload | 12 hours |
| Views | 10.3K |
| Cost | Free |
| Certificate | Not available |
Best Course on Watershed Management with Free Certificate (EPA)
Watershed Academy Web is the Watershed Academy’s distance learning program. It is a set of self-paced training modules that represents a basic, but broad introduction to watershed management. The program’s goal is to provide useful information to local, state and tribal efforts aimed at improving the health of waters in the USA by protecting and managing their watersheds.
For the Online Training in Watershed Management course, you need to complete 15 text-based modules. 12 are compulsory, while you can choose the final three from several electives. I was unable to access some web pages, but the downloadable PDFs were a suitable substitute.
Modules include (among others):
- Watershed ecology
- Lake ecology
- Watershed change
- Climate change
- Weather and the built environment
- Dealing with drought
- Invasive non-native species
- Excess nitrogen in the U.S. environment
- Biotic invasions
- Effects of aquaculture on world fish supplies
- Use of the national hydrography dataset (NHD) and NHDPlus
- Management practices
- Stream corridor restoration tools
- Applying ecological principles to management of the U.S. national forests
- Community and social practices
- Sustainable finance
- Statewide watershed management
- Monitoring consortiums
- Resources & external modules
- Water in a changing world
- Water law and the clean water act.
Go through the course materials, achieve the 70% pass mark in the quizzes, and download your free certificate.
| Institution | Watershed Academy |
| Provider | US Environmental Protection Agency |
| Workload | 10-30 hours |
| Cost | Free |
| Certificate | Free |
Old but Good Water Resources Engineering Tutorial (NPTEL and IIT Kanpur)
Recorded in 2008, Water Resources Engineering offers a comprehensive overview of the principles and practices in this field. This video series covers a range of topics essential for understanding the management, development, and conservation of water resources. It is designed for students and professionals seeking to deepen their knowledge in this critical field of engineering.
Syllabus:
- Introduction to water resources engineering
- Fundamentals of water resources
- Water resource management and development
- Hydrology and water flow
- Water quality and treatment
- Irrigation and agricultural water management
- Urban water systems
- Flood management and control
- Dams and reservoirs
- Water policy and legislation
- Conclusion and future directions
“the lecture was so great! this is an excellent resource. thank you Prof. Srivastava, the crew and and everyone involved with nptel!” – @janhvidelight, YouTube learner.
| Institution | NPTEL and Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur |
| Provider | YouTube |
| Instructor | Prof. Rajesh Srivastava |
| Workload | 27 hours |
| Views (First Video) | 194K |
| Cost | Free |
| Certificate | Not available |
Best Sustainable Hydrology Course (SDG Academy and Stockholm International Water Institute)
Water: Addressing the Global Crisis addresses the global water crisis, focusing on sustainable management and sanitation to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 6. Explore the crisis’s multifaceted nature, including its links to climate change, ecosystems, food and energy production, and conflict over shared resources. Through theoretical knowledge and case studies, the course aims to enhance understanding of water’s role in societal development and how individual actions can contribute to water sustainability.
Syllabus:
- Introduction to Water and SDGs
- Ensuring Water for All
- Addressing climate change
- Ecosystems and water management
- Water Governance
- Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WaSH)
- Transboundary water issues
- Water and Food Security
- Water and Energy Nexus
- Water management in industry and agriculture
- Corporate social responsibility in water use
- Global case studies.
| Provider | edX |
| Institution | SDG Academy and Stockholm International Water Institute |
| Instructors | Dr. Therese Sjömander Magnusson, Dr. Stefan Uhlenbrook, Dr. John H. Matthews, et al |
| Workload | 27-45 hours |
| Enrollments | 14.9K |
| Rating | 4.3/5.0 |
| Cost | Free audit |
| Certificate | Paid |
Best Short Hydrology Overview (Thomas Evans)
While focusing on streams rather than hydrology itself, Stream Ecology is a concise course that explains the critical role that streams and rivers play in the water cycle.
You’ll learn about:
- Overview and uses of streams
- Food webs
- Seasonal changes
- Availability of fresh water
- Stream and river flow
- Drainage basins
- Dams and human interactions.
Thomas Evans also has Hydrology and Geomorphology I and Hydrology and Geomorphology II, that explain the role of water in shaping the landscape, particularly in the eastern United States.
| Provider | YouTube |
| Channel | Thomas Evans |
| Workload | 43 mins |
| Views | 6.4K |
| Rating | 151 likes |
| Cost | Free |
| Certificate | Not available |
Best Course on Mapping Hydrological Basins (Tim Clark)
Basic Hydrology is designed for soil and water district technicians and junior engineers, focusing on modeling small watersheds for conservation and stormwater management. Through a combination of GIS and manual analysis methods, you will learn practical skills culminating in design examples to apply your knowledge.
Syllabus:
- Introduction to basic hydrology: overview of hydrology, introduction to watershed modeling
- Computing peak runoff rates: methods for rural and urban watersheds
- Watershed delineation: using maps and ground truthing techniques
- Hydrology models overview: differences between EFH2, TR-20/TR-55, and the Rational Method
- GIS in hydrology: using ArcGIS (spatial analyst extension), using QGIS for hydrologic modeling
- Software for hydrology: EFH2 for rural hydrology, HydroCAD for urban hydrology
- Practical application and design examples: rural and urban watersheds.
| Provider | Udemy |
| Instructor | Tim Clark |
| Workload | 2-3 hours |
| Enrollments | 20.6K |
| Rating | 4.4/5.0 (1.5K) |
| Cost | Free |
| Certificate | Not available |
Best Tutorial on Python Applications for Hydrology (Australian Water School)
Python Applications for Hydrology and Hydrogeology delves into the use of Python for hydrology and hydrogeology. It features expert presenters who discuss Python’s applications within the water science field. The webinar emphasizes Python’s role as a free, easy-to-use, and powerful tool for automating tasks, analyzing data, and creating visualizations, making it an essential skill for hydro(geo)logists.
Syllabus:
- Introduction
- Core Python Applications in Hydro(geo)logy
- Data wrangling and visualization
- Time Series Analysis
- Data Visualization
- Course Discussion
- Q&A Session
- Survey & Closing Remarks
The Australian Water School has produced hundreds of videos and webinars on water resources, including:
- Climate Change Impacts on Extreme Event Hydrology (1 hour)
- Why Water Professionals Should Care about the Sustainable Development Goals (1 hour)
- Probable Maximum Flood (1 hour)
- Bushfire Hydrology (1 hour)
- Sustaining India’s Hidden Water Resource (49 mins)
“Was helpful and amazing it informed as the difference between r and python as well as various packages and tools of python in modeling and data processing of hydrological/hydrogeological data” – Tekuamework Fikadu Nida, Class Central learner.
| Provider | YouTube |
| Channel | Australian Water School |
| Instructors | Luk Peeters, Chris Turnadge, and Vincent Post |
| Workload | 1 hour |
| Views | 24.0K |
| Likes | 468 |
| Cost | Free |
| Certificate | Not available |
Other Sites
- Reddit: r/hydrology
- NASA Precipitation Education: The water cycle
- United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) SDG 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
People Also Ask
Who Should Take These Courses?
Learning hydrology is essential for professionals focused on water management, environmental protection, and infrastructure development, particularly as climate change impacts water availability.
What Professions Need Hydrology?
Hydrology is relevant to a range of careers in civil engineering and environmental science, groundwater (hydrogeology), water infrastructure (drinking water and wastewater), hydropower, mining (runoff and drainage), irrigation and soil water management.
What does a hydrologist do?
According to the British Hydrological Society, hydrologists study water availability: storage, movement, and how its availability is affected by human activity and climate change.
Can I Get a Free Certificate in Hydrology?
The Watershed Academy offers a free 15-module course with a free certificate.
Do Hydrologists Use GIS?
Use GIS as a tool to model small watersheds for conservation and stormwater management in Basic Hydrology.
How Can I Contribute to Water Sustainability?
Knowledge of hydrology can lead to more efficient water usage. Learn about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and how to use water sustainably in Water: Addressing the Global Crisis.
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