HWR 597a: Computational Tools in EOS Hydrology -- Spring 2000


This course is designed to give students an intensive introduction to Unix shell, awk, graphics and image processing tools to solve conceptually simple but data intensive computational questions in hydrology. Examples will be drawn from the instructor's NASA-EOS (Earth Observing System) project on alpine hydrology and other research projects. The need for the tools that students will develop in this workshop is highlighted by the very large data sets and large number of simple calculations encountered in using EOS data.


Instructor: Roger Bales
Office Hours: by appointment (sign-up sheet on office door)
Email: roger@hwr.arizona.edu
Teaching Assistant: Ray Brice -- email: ray@hwr.arizona.edu

Class meets: F 10:00-10:50, Harshbarger 118B. There will be an hour lecture & questions. Ray Brice will be available for help during office hours in Harshbarger 118D (Fridays 11-12; Thursdays 2-4). Questions can also be emailed to Ray or Dr. Bales.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with computer use.

Important Dates:

Handouts: Spring 2000 homeworks.

Grading: Each assignment will be graded either "check", "check plus", check minus", or halfway in between these. To get the final class grade, all assignments will be averaged, weighted by the number of weeks the assignment covered. Those with a "check plus" average will get an "A"; those with a "check" average will get a "B".

Additional Materials

You need to become proficient in a Unix text editor. There are several to choose from, such as vi, emacs, textedit, dtpad, or pico. vi and emacs are the most powerful and learning either of them will come in handy if you continue to use Unix. CCIT has a free vi handout, or look at the following on-line tutorial:

A very good on-line Unix help can be found here.

You can use the handout Learning xvgr to help you with Assignment 3. Here is an on-line xvgr help page xvgr help

Here is a reference comparing GIF and JPEG formats:

Here are some resources for HTML programming: