“…"Borders" as a metaphor in implementing largescale, holistic water sustainability research L arge-scale holistic water sustainability research is fraught with methodological challenges both in the research enterprise itself and the application of results on the ground (Aeschbach-Hertig and Gleeson 2012; Bierkins and Wada 2019;Hargrove et al 2013;Megdal et al 2016). Scientific approaches to realize sustainable water futures in complex systems, such as those described recently by Elias et al (2023) and Talchabhadel et al (2021), require integrated science combined with holistic, collaborative management by stakeholders to achieve desirable, meaningful results. While integrated science can identify possible and/or probable outcomes for water futures, it is stakeholder-driven decision-making and implementation that will determine and realize preferred outcomes for sustainability.…”