Hydrology: The interdisciplinary science of water

Abstract

We live in a world where biophysical and social processes are tightly coupled. Hydrologic systems change in response to a variety of natural and human forces such as climate variability and change, water use and water infrastructure, and land cover change. In turn, changes in hydrologic systems impact socioeconomic, ecological, and climate systems at a number of scales, leading to a coevolution of these interlinked systems. The Harvard Water Program, Hydrosociology, Integrated Water Resources Management, Ecohydrology, Hydromorphology, and Sociohydrology were all introduced to provide distinct, interdisciplinary perspectives on water problems to address the contemporary dynamics of human interaction with the hydrosphere and the evolution of the Earth's hydrologic systems. Each of them addresses scientific, social, and engineering challenges related to how humans influence water systems and vice versa. There are now numerous examples in the literature of how holistic approaches can provide a structure and vision of the future of hydrology. We review selected examples, which taken together, describe the type of theoretical and applied integrated hydrologic analyses and associated curricular content required to address the societal issue of water resources sustainability. We describe a modern interdisciplinary science of hydrology needed to develop an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of the connectedness between human and natural systems and to determine effective solutions to resolve the complex water problems that the world faces today. Nearly, every theoretical hydrologic model introduced previously is in need of revision to accommodate how climate, land, vegetation, and socioeconomic factors interact, change, and evolve over time.

Drought in a human-modified world: reframing drought definitions, understanding, and analysis approaches

“…The framework proposed here is in line with suggestions for hydrological research in general, for example, with the call by Wagener et al (2010) for a paradigm shift to study hydrology under change, with the research agenda set by Thompson et al (2013) for hydrological prediction in the Anthropocene, with the new decade of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) Panta Rhei McMillan et al, 2016), and with the propositions for hydrological research and water management by Vogel et al (2015). Complementary to these visions on the future of hydrology in general, we think that a focus on drought is needed to cope with complex future water challenges.…”

“…Dillehay and Kolata, 2004;Garnier, 2015), which can help to understand feedbacks between society and the water system. In this light, it is also very informative to understand how people deal with uncertainties in drought prediction (Kasprzyk et al, 2009;Wagener et al, 2010), which are partly caused by the gaps in our understanding and unsuitability of data and tools to quantify the interaction between people and drought in the Anthropocene (Vogel et al, 2015). The use of drought predictions by society plays an important role in the impacts and feedbacks of drought.…”

Nonstationarity in maximum annual daily streamflow series from Southern Brazil

“…Traditional methods developed for that purpose are based on the assumption of stationarity, which implies that the variable under analysis has a time invariant probability density function with fixed parameters (PETROW; READ;VOGEL, , 2016SRAJ et al, 2016;VOGEL et al, 2015;YAINDL;WALTER, 2011). However, the stationarity hypothesis might be rendered invalid due to several factors that influence streamflow, e.g., hydroclimatic changes (MILLY et al, 2008), urbanization (VOGEL; YAINDL; WALTER, 2011), agricultural management practices (FOUFOULA-GEORGIOU et al, 2015) operation of hydropower plants (RÄSÄNEN et al, 2017) and reservoirs (ZAJAC et al, 2017).…”

“…Assuming the simplification of stationarity or only a multiplication factor in hydrological studies might be a risky practice. A change of concepts related to the estimation of the flood return periods and risks assumed in engineering projects is necessary and has led researchers to updated the standard statistical methods in order to account for possible nonstationarity in hydrological time series (READ;VOGEL, 2016;SRAJ et al, 2016;VOGEL et al, 2015).…”

Forest Management Challenges for Sustaining Water Resources in the Anthropocene

“…Based on many past successes, there is an expectation by land managers and the public that we have sufficient knowledge and tools to keep watersheds functioning and capable of providing and sustaining ecosystem services into the future [10]. Recent research suggests rapid and substantial progress in our knowledge of watershed sensitivity to rapidly changing conditions [13,14]; however, critical knowledge gaps exist in applying forest watershed sciences to sustain ecosystem services in a new environment [10]. In particular, we lack a mechanistic understanding of hydrological responses to the combined effects of climate change (especially climate extremes) and human disturbances such as urbanization and land use change.…”