As the Earth’s population increases and a changing climate brings about changes in the natural environment, stresses develop in natural and social habitats. In particular, changes in the availability, quality and variability of water supplies, coupled with a period of increasing demand for water, cause hydrologic forcing in many different disciplines.

This hydrologic forcing and consequent water-related decisions have profound impacts on the social and ecological environment. These impacts and their feedbacks create an unprecedented opportunity for significant new interdisciplinary science themes for hydrology. These will encompass a continuum of spatial scales from a single catchment to entire continents. The science of hydrology has been in the forefront of these issues but much work remains to be done for the development of scientific content in the interface between hydrology and the climate change, biology, chemistry and social sciences.

This conference on The Changing Physical and Social Environment: Hydrologic Impacts and Challenging Feedbacks targets these interdisciplinary science themes through a challenging program organized around five themes.

Scope

The Conference is organized around the following five interdisciplinary themes:

• Hydrology and climate change
• Hydrology, bio-geochemistry and environmental management
• Hydrology, health and improved socio-economic conditions
• Hydrology, history and conflicts
• Hydrology: past, present and future developments

Hydrology and climate change

Papers are solicited that describe feedbacks from the surface hydrology to the climate change models as well as the impacts of climatic change on natural hydrologic processes (e.g., snow accumulation and ablation, soil moisture variability, surface precipitation and evapo-transpiration, groundwater recharge and subsurface flows) and on biohydrochemical processes (e.g., anoxic basins, degenerated peatland, acid sulphate soils) for a spectrum of scales from regional to continental/global.

Hydrology, bio-geochemistry and environmental management

Innovative studies are solicited that advance new paradigms for environmental management based on bio-geochemistry and hydrologic prediction. Of particular interest is the role of uncertainty in observation and prediction in the development of management strategies for water quantity and quality under climatic variability and change. Papers are welcomed on the increasing use of poor quality groundwaters and the impacts of this (subsidence, surface water quality change) as megacities develop. The presentation of relevant demonstration projects around the world is encouraged and innovative solution strategies for management issues in transboundary basins and groundwaters worldwide are sought.

Hydrology, health and improved socio-economic conditions

Hydrology is increasingly becoming involved with providing advice to decision makers on the social and economic significance of water quality and quantity. Papers are invited in areas covering economic hydrology; hydrology and livelihoods; cultural and social water allocation; assessment of socially based risk and uncertainty in water management; social impacts of water infrastructure; defining environmental values; integrating social, economic and hydrological scales in modelling; and dealing with conflict in water allocation.

Hydrology, history and conflicts

Past hydrology is increasingly questioned to forecast possible future hydrological scenarios. Paleo-hydrological archives include sediment, soil, dendrochronological and speleothelm records. They allow the reconstruction of paleo-hydrological patterns (e.g. hydrology in present day deserts) and offer a tool to forecast the impact of present day policies (groundwater over-abstraction, inter-state and infra-state competition for surface and ground-water).

Papers will be invited in areas covering the use of these paleo-hydrological archives to assess present-day hydrological risk, hazard and crisis frequency. These archives can also be used to understand simultaneous (e.g. Maya and Khmer) civilization extinctions, and papers giving an historical perspective on modern conflicts based on these records are welcome

Hydrology: past, present and future developments

Innovative papers on hydrologic process observations, modeling and prediction are solicited under this theme. Of particular interest are papers that address the use of remote sensing (e.g. GRACE) in conjunction with in situ observations for improved predictions of hydrologic processes over large areas and in ungauged basins.  Papers that describe strategies for advancing hydrologic science in the coming decades are of particular interest.

Abstract submission

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