There is no universally accepted Definition of hydrology, but the U.S. Federal Council for Science and Technology (1962)says it is “the science that treats of all the waters of the earth, their occurrence, circulation, and distribution, their chemical and physical properties, and their reaction with their environment including their relation to living things. The domain of hydrology embraces the full life history of water on the earth.” Hydrology is, therefore, one of the most comprehensive earth sciences (q.v.), involving a multidisciplinary synthesis of a wide range of environmental studies. To reduce the scope of the subject to manageable proportions, some scientific studies of water are conventionally, if somewhat arbitrarily, excluded. For example, although hydrology is concerned with the occurrence and distribution of all forms of precipitation on the earth, certain aspects of atmospheric moisture fall mainly within the province of meteorology. Similarly, oceanic water comes...
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Smith, K. (1984). Hydrology. In: Finkl, C. (eds) Applied Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series, vol 3. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-30842-3_35
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