Twenty-three unsolved problems in hydrology (UPH) – a community perspective

Authors

Günter Blöschl
Christopher M. U. Neale, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
A cast of thousands, A cast of thousands

ORCID IDs

Günter Blöschl http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2227-8225

Date of this Version

2019

Document Type

Article

Citation

HYDROLOGICAL SCIENCES JOURNAL 2019, VOL. 64, NO. 10, 1141–1158 https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2019.1620507

Comments

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License

Abstract

This paper is the outcome of a community initiative to identify major unsolved scientific problems in hydrology motivated by a need for stronger harmonisation of research efforts. The procedure involved a public consultation through online media, followed by two workshops through which a large number of potential science questions were collated, prioritised, and synthesised. In spite of the diversity of the participants (230 scientists in total), the process revealed much about community priorities and the state of our science: a preference for continuity in research questions rather than radical departures or redirections from past and current work. Questions remain focused on the process-based understanding of hydrological variability and causality at all space and time scales. Increased attention to environmental change drives a new emphasis on understanding how change propagates across interfaces within the hydrological system and across disciplinary boundaries. In particular, the expansion of the human footprint raises a new set of questions related to human interactions with nature and water cycle feedbacks in the context of complex water management problems. We hope that this reflection and synthesis of the 23 unsolved problems in hydrology will help guide research efforts for some years to come.