Reframing socio-hydrological research to include a social science perspective

Xu, Lingyu; Gober, Patricia; Wheater, H. S.; Kajikawa, Yuya

doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2018.05.061

Cited by 73 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Sociohydrology, a subfield of hydrology, has recently been launched to improve understanding of the processes linking human activities to hydrology (Sivapalan et al, 2012(Sivapalan et al, , 2014). This concept is highly welcome, yet the published studies are still centered at a local to regional scale (Xu et al, 2018), and as stated by Wada et al (2017) "… still requires more detailed parameterizations of human behavior and process-oriented modelling frameworks." A bold shift to transdisciplinarity is pivotal (Melsen et al, 2018).…”

Section: River Basins As Social-ecological Systems (Sess)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A bold shift to transdisciplinarity is pivotal (Melsen et al, 2018). Accordingly, major challenges still exist in the detailed parameterization of SES for the field of human-water systems (Wada et al, 2017;Xu et al, 2018), and there is a need to move toward increasing transdisciplinarity when addressing such systems (Melsen et al, 2018). Therefore, we propose an indicator-based, gridded approach for analyzing the global interaction of humanity and freshwater as a SES.…”

Section: River Basins As Social-ecological Systems (Sess)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Over the last two decades, large‐scale hydrological models have increasingly included components describing human influence on water resources, yet Wada et al () maintain that “ … the representation of human activities in hydrological models remain challenging .” Sociohydrology, a subfield of hydrology, has recently been launched to improve understanding of the processes linking human activities to hydrology (Sivapalan et al, , ). This concept is highly welcome, yet the published studies are still centered at a local to regional scale (Xu et al, ), and as stated by Wada et al () “ … still requires more detailed parameterizations of human behavior and process‐oriented modelling frameworks .” A bold shift to transdisciplinarity is pivotal (Melsen et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The Planet's Stressed River Basins: Too Much Pressure or Too Little Adaptive Capacity?

2019

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Freshwater is one of the most critical elements for sustainable development of ecosystems and societies. River basins, concomitant with administrative zones, form a common unit for freshwater management. So far, no comprehensive, global analysis exists that would link the ecological challenges of the planet's river basins to the capacity of the societies to cope with them. We address this gap by performing a geospatial resilience analysis for a global set of 541 river basins. We use the social‐ecological systems approach by relating three ecological vulnerability factors (human footprint, natural hazards, and water scarcity) with three adaptive capacity factors (governance, economy, and human development), based on temporal trajectories from 1990 to 2015. Additionally, we examine resilience by subtracting ecological vulnerability from adaptive capacity. The most striking result is the fundamentally different patterns of controlling factors of the resilience in different developing regions, particularly those of Africa and Asia. Their root causes are particularly low adaptive capacity in Africa and high ecological vulnerability in Asia. Alarmingly, the difference between those continents grew within the study period. Finally, this study highlights the rapid dynamics of adaptive capacity in comparison to ecological vulnerability, the latter having more inertia. Their fragile balance is of our interest; they can either support or counteract each other depending on the geographic location.

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Section: River Basins As Social-ecological Systems (Sess)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: River Basins As Social-ecological Systems (Sess)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Planet's Stressed River Basins: Too Much Pressure or Too Little Adaptive Capacity?

2019

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“…Understanding and predicting processes in integrated human‐water systems are challenging. This is because different disciplines, vocabularies, and perspectives must be synthesized (Troy et al, ; Wesselink et al, ; Xu et al, ). Bringing frameworks, theories, and models from different disciplines together is particularly challenging, as they typically operate at different scales (i.e., household vs. watershed), focus on different outcome variables (i.e., streamflow vs. welfare), and incorporate different scientific principles (i.e., mass balance vs. general equilibrium).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It was argued that instead of inferring the nature of human‐water system feedbacks from historical (time series) data, these can also be obtained through field studies, through surveys, and other forms of data collection, with the goal of understanding human behaviors at a fundamental, empirical level (Mostert, ). There were calls for place‐based studies in real places, with a greater involvement of social scientists in sociohydrological studies so as to expand the foundations of sociohydrology (Wesselink et al, ; Xu et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expanding the Scope and Foundation of Sociohydrology as the Science of Coupled Human‐Water Systems

Konar

Garcia

Sanderson

et al. 2019

Water Resources Research

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Sociohydrology was launched as the science dealing with feedbacks between coupled human and water systems. Much of the early work in sociohydrology involved studies in spatially isolated domains (e.g., river basins) dealing with phenomena that involved emergent patterns in the time domain, with a focus on formulating and testing hypotheses about how they arise. The papers collected in this Special Section "Sociohydrology: Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Coupled Human-Water Systems" illustrate that the scientific scope of sociohydrology has broadened over the last few years, with a rich diversity of phenomena studied and an expansion of the knowledge foundations and methodologies applied. These Special Section papers now incorporate methodologies and approaches from a wide range of social science disciplines, including anthropology, complex systems, economics, and sociology. The major themes tackled by these papers are understanding (i) water metabolism-the economic use of water; (ii) interactions between humans and droughts; (iii) interactions between humans and floods; and (iv) the role of human institutions, policy, and management. These collected papers provide a foundation for future research that strives to understand how to achieve water resources sustainability (society to water) and reduce the risk of hydrological hazards in society (water to society). Going forward, we suggest that the development of a common sociohydrology framework will be paramount for research development and student training. Additionally, increased engagement with the broader water management communities will enhance sociohydrology understanding and impact.

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