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Master Class "Hydrologic Science for an Ever Changing World: Search for New Hydrologic Concepts, Theories, Models and Practices"

Over the past ten years there has been increasing dissatisfaction with the status of current theories of hydrology, and the way hydrology is taught and practiced. These concerns stem from increasing recognition of our inability to make robust predictions of the water cycle at all scales, especially in the context of global change: climate change, human-induced land use changes, and human interferences in the water cycle. There is also recognition of a developing global water crisis, which is intimately linked to a developing global food crisis and energy crisis, and of course the now established climate change crisis. There is a growing concern that hydrologists' narrow training and focus are preventing us from playing an important role in preventing and alleviating these global crises. Increasingly these problems are regional and global, and the traditional hydrologists' focus on local and low-dimensional problems and related scientific issues must give way to a broader, complex, highly inter-connected and inter-disciplinary treatment of water at all scales and in a variety of contexts. There has been increasing calls for a new hydrology, and for new concepts and theories upon which to build this new hydrology, so that we will be better positioned to address these and related problems, and in this way maintain and enrich hydrology as an exciting and policy relevant science. Some common themes emerging in related discussion over the past decade include, (i) merging the traditional reductionist (bottom-up) and systems (top-down) perspectives to build towards a more functional approach to hydrology, (ii) more emphasis on global, comparative hydrology, including a focus on classification and similarity, (iii) watersheds as ecosystems and the key role of biosphere-hydrosphere interactions at all scales, (iv) inter-disciplinary: broadening the base of hydrology through embedding concepts from those sister disciplines that deal with or are affected by the presence and/or movement of water, (v) explicit inclusion of human-nature interactions and feedbacks at all scales, (vi) concepts of sustainability, and management of watershed/ecosystem services, (vii) new approaches to measurement and observations, data organization and analysis, (viii) new approaches to modeling, combining traditional approaches based on Newtonian mechanics with new approaches that embed evolutionary perspectives that underpin the self-organization and co-evolution of climate, soils, vegetation and topography, (ix) renewed emphases on predictions and decisions with inadequate data with explicit treatment of all forms of uncertainty, and (x) a merging of different forms of learning: from fundamental theories, from observations and from applications.

Conveners

Murugesu Sivapalan, University of Illinois
Hubert Savenije, Delft University of Technology

Leading Speakers

Keith Beven, University of Lancaster
Günter Blöschl, Vienna University of Technology
Wouter Buytaert, University of Bristol
Nicola Fohrer, University of Kiel, Germany
Axel Kleidon, Max Planck Institute, Jena, Germany
Salomon Kroonenberg, Delft University of Technology
Alberto Montanari, University of Bologna
Hubert Savenije, Delft University of Technology
Bettina Schaefli, Delft University of Technology
Stan Schymanski, Max Planck Institute, Jena, Germany
Murugesu Sivapalan, University of Illinois
Stefan Uhlenbrook, UNESCO-IHE
Nick van de Giesen, Delft University of Technology
Ross Woods, NIWA, New Zealand
Erwin Zehe, Munich University of Technology


UIUC Hydrologic Synthesis Project	IAHS PUB Initiative	Delft University of Technology

PROGRAM:

Monday June 23, 2008 (download all presentations of this day)
8.40 - 8.45 am	Hubert Savenije, Delft University of Technology Welcoming remarks
8.45 - 9.00 am	Murugesu Sivapalan, University of Illinois Introduction to the UIUC Synthesis Activity
9.00 - 9.45 am	Erwin Zehe, Munich University of Technology Thermodynamic perspectives on soil structure formation and ecosystem resilience: implications for predictive modeling
9.45 - 10.30 zm	Stan Schymanski, Max Planck Institute, Jena, Germany Role of optimality and other organizing principles in hydrology
10.30 - 11.00 am	Coffee Break
11.00 - 11.45 am	Axel Kleidon, Max Planck Institute, Jena, Germany Thermodynamics of land surface hydrology and the applicability of Maximum Entropy Production
11.45 - 12.45 am	Short presentations and Poster Summaries: Miriam Gerrits - Analytical derivation of the Budyko curve. Based on rainfall characteristics and a simple evaporation model Christiaan van der Tol - Some developments in ecohydrolgy Margriet Groenendijk
12.45 - 2.00 pm	Lunch
2.00 - 2.45 pm	Bettina Schaefli, Delft University of Technology Behavioral modeling: A new combined mechanistic and evolutionary approach to watershed hydrologic modeling
2.45 - 3.30 pm	Salomon Kroonenberg, Delft University of Technology The Human Scale
3.30 - 4.00 pm	Coffee Break
4.00 - 4.45 pm	Remko Uijlenhoet, Wageningen University New opportunities using old techniques: areal rainfall monitoring using microwave attenuation
4.45 - 5.30 pm	Discussion of Presentations so far: breakout Group 1
5.30 - 7.00 pm	Drinks
Tuesday June 24, 2008 (download all presentations of this day)
8.45 - 9.00 am	Günter Blöschl, Vienna University of Technology PUB Benchmark Assessment Report
9.00 - 9.45 am	Günter Blöschl, Vienna University of Technology Predictability of hydrological change across scales
9.45 - 10.30 am	Wouter Buytaert, University of Bristol Hydrological prediction under non-stationary conditions
10.30 - 11.00 am	Coffee Break
11.00 - 12.00 am	Short presentations and poster summaries: Patrick Bogaart - Hydrology in an Earth Surface System context Hessel Winsemius - Closing the water balance in ungauged basins Fabrizio Fenicia - Modelling a changing environment. Which are the constants and which are the variables? David Love - Changing rainfall Changing rainfall and discharge patterns in the northern Limpopo Basin
12.00 - 12.45 pm	Discussion of the presentations so far: breakout group 2
12.45 - 2.00 pm	Lunch
2.00 - 2.45 pm	Alberto Montanari, University of Bologna Hydrological signatures: looking for macro-scale signatures of local scale processes
2.45 - 3.30 pm	Ross Woods, NIWA, New Zealand A new multi-scale functional approach to modeling
3.30 - 4.00 pm	Coffee Break
4.00 - 4.50 pm	Short presentations and poster summaries: Ilyas Masih - Regionalization of a conceptual rainfall runoff model based on similarity of the flow duration curve. Antony Anbarasu Selvaraj - Hydrology – as practiced in a developing country Hodson Makuria - Field based measurement approaches to better understand soil moisture dynamics for improved rainfed smallholder agricultural systems in Sub-Saharan Africa.
4.50 - 5.30 pm	Discussion of presentations so far: break out group 3
6.00 -	Dinner
Wednesday June 25, 2008 (download all presentations of this day)
8.45 - 9.00 am	Summary of presentations so far: Group 1
9.00 - 9.45 am	Keith Beven, University of Lancaster, UK On doing better hydrological science
9.45 - 10.30 am	Hubert Savenije, Delft University of Technology Adaptation to climate change, space for time
10.30 - 11.00 am	Coffee Break
11.00 - 11.45 am	Van de Giesen, Delft University of Technology "The hydrological model of everything" (with John Selker, Jan Boll and Chris Duffy)
11.45 - 12.30 am	Nicola Fohrer Linking watershed and river processes to model aquatic habitats
12.30 - 12.45 pm	Summary of presentations so far: breakout group 2
12.45 - 2.00 pm	Lunch
2.00 - 2.5045m	Stefan Uhlenbrook, UNESCO-IHE New Challenges for hydrology in a changing environment with respect to development
2.45 - 3.30 pm	Murugesu Sivapalan, University of Illinois New approaches to the education and training of hydrologists
3.30 - 4.00 pm	Coffee Break
4.00 - 4.15 pm	Summary of presentations so far: break out group 3
4.15 - 5.15 pm	Concluding discussion: breakout groups 1, 2, 3
5.15 - 5.30 pm	Clossure and next steps: M. Sivapalan and H. Savenije