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Rangecroft et al. provide an important and interesting paper on the challenges of interdisciplinary research and fieldwork with participants in water resource management. The paper shows the challenges of interaction between their research areas and demonstrates the importance of how a researcher interacts with their selected study sites. My key points reflect the use of different methodologies within social and natural sciences and across them as well as the main challenge of who has the power to influence the research directions. Research is not value-free and is highly influenced by one's own training and knowledge, which needs to be addressed in the research activities. Finally, an option might be to move beyond interdisciplinary constraints and to work within a stronger transdisciplinary framework. Water research very much needs to interact with non-academic people to understand the challenges and possible solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Clean Water Act (CWA) is the primary federal mechanism by which the physical, chemical, and biological integrity of streams, lakes, and wetlands are protected in the United States. The CWA has evolved considerably since its initial passage in 1948, including explicit expansions and contractions of jurisdictional scope through a series of legislative actions, court decisions, and agency rules. Here, we provide a practical summary of the CWA's evolution, detailing the major updates or revisions and their circumstances. Additionally, we identify the jurisdictional scope of the law for rivers and streams, lakes, and wetlands based on the language used and implementation by the agencies during the same time period. While the rulemaking process commonly uses language that will be abstract to many hydrologists, understanding the on‐the‐ground implications, quantifying regulatory (un)certainties, and assessing the magnitude of changes through time is important to understanding the implications of environmental regulation development, litigation, and enforcement. Thus, we translate the enforcement norms and definitions into quantitative estimates for Clean Water Act scope in the Wabash River Basin (Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, USA) as a demonstration of the spatial consequences of changing regulatory language. This article is categorized under:Engineering Water > Planning WaterHuman Water > Water GovernanceWater and Life > Conservation, Management, and Awareness [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents prominent Nordic contributions to stochastic methods in hydrology and water resources during the previous 50 years. The development in methods from analysis of stationary and independent hydrological events to include non-stationarity, risk analysis, big data, operational research and climate change impacts is hereby demonstrated. The paper is divided into four main sections covering flood frequency and drought analyses, assessment of rainfall extremes, stochastic approaches to water resources management and approaches to climate change and adaptation efforts. It is intended as a review paper referring to a rich selection of internationally published papers authored by Nordic hydrologists or hydrologists from abroad working in a Nordic country or in cooperation with Nordic hydrologists. Emerging trends in needs and methodologies are highlighted in the conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socio-hydrology has recently garnered attention as a promising research paradigm among hydrologists. In this paper, we argue that viewing the socio-hydrological systems as a network of causal factors can assist in these efforts by revealing emergent properties of socio-hydrological systems. These factors, which are neither actors nor affiliations but symbolic representations of miscellaneous phenomena, represent the key variables affecting socio-hydrological system behaviour. Despite being crucial for understanding system dynamics, these factors are not captured by most equations of coupled human–water coevolutionary models. To demonstrate our method, we use qualitative case study research to analyse the Jaguaribe Basin in Ceará State-Brazil as a network of factors, i.e. mental conceptions, and representations of water resource management experts. We show that most results are unsurprising, exhibiting expected causal relationships. However, there was at least one unexpected result, which showed that the variable "conflict" was the single most sensitive variable to systemic evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joint research between economists and hydrologists increasingly contributes to optimising the economic value gained from water, while safeguarding its social and environmental values. The application of hydro-economic analysis to mining regions, however, is limited. This paper examines why this is the case and how to confront it. The paper focuses on identifying and describing features of large-scale mines and mine regions that are challenging to analyse such as: magnitude of capital involved, time-scale and remoteness of projects, inherent environmental risks, and strong negative perceptions about mining's impacts on water. These characteristics may limit the applicability of established hydro-economic concepts and methods, thus risk-based metrics are discussed as complementary tools. We also contend that further research and development in water-related ecosystem services should be a priority, in order to better quantify trade-offs between the economic benefits of water use by mining and competing users, including environmental flows. Case studies of mining regions in Chile, Madagascar and Sweden are summarised to illustrate some of the issues raised. While data limitations are an obstacle, new and extended case studies are required to explore how the challenges may be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While 'solutions' to challenges of water supply in the Pacific may seem obvious to hydrologists, engineers and planners, their implementation may not be straightforward. Water is embedded in cultural, religious and political contexts, and what seems obvious to planners may seem neither obvious, nor acceptable, to citizens. However, these contexts change continuously, and opportunities arise for changes in narratives around ownership, supply and management of water. Citizens' beliefs about the state's 'rights' will vary with societal context, and will shape the ways in which ownership and management of water is worked out in specific locations. This paper outlines thinking and discourses around ownership and management of fresh water in Samoa, and the constraints which culture has imposed on water supply over time. Water discourses have shifted from questions about ownership of specific sources to general discussions about conservation and management of natural resources. This shift has resulted, in part, from the ways in which government has managed the process and, in part, from growing public awareness of water within the larger environmental context. The paper focuses on Samoan material, but some of the generic issues have wider significance in the Pacific because similar variables combine in similar ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Rational Formula is the most applied equation in practical hydrology due to its simplicity and the effective compromise between theory and data availability. Although the Rational Formula has several drawbacks, it is reliable and surprisingly accurate considering the paucity of input information. However, after more than a century, the recent progress in computational ability, theory and large-scale monitoring compel us to try to suggest a more advanced yet still empirical procedure for estimating peak discharge in small and ungauged basins. In this paper, an alternative empirical procedure is described and discussed, and then a discussion as to whether the Rational Formula is still necessary is presented. The presented methodology integrates the three standard steps of the common event-based approach (design hyetograph, rainfall excess and rainfall–runoff transformation) accurately adapted for application with a lack of observed data. The proposed procedure requires the same input information as necessary for application of the Rational Formula (soil properties, intensity–duration–frequency rainfall curves andTc) and provides both the peak discharge and the design hydrograph shape and, most importantly, reduces the subjectivity of the hydrologist in its application.Editor D. Koutsoyiannis [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Skillful and timely streamflow forecasts are critically important to water managers and emergency protection services. To provide these forecasts, hydrologists must predict the behavior of complex coupled human-natural systems using incomplete and uncertain information and imperfect models. Moreover, operational predictions often integrate anecdotal information and unmodeled factors. Forecasting agencies face four key challenges: 1) making the most of available data, 2) making accurate predictions using models, 3) turning hydrometeorological forecasts into effective warnings, and 4) administering an operational service. Each challenge presents a variety of research opportunities, including the development of automated quality-control algorithms for the myriad of data used in operational streamflow forecasts, data assimilation, and ensemble forecasting techniques that allow for forecaster input, methods for using human-generated weather forecasts quantitatively, and quantification of human interference in the hydrologic cycle. Furthermore, much can be done to improve the communication of probabilistic forecasts and to design a forecasting paradigm that effectively combines increasingly sophisticated forecasting technology with subjective forecaster expertise. These areas are described in detail to share a real-world perspective and focus for ongoing research endeavors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in climate are expected to have a substantial impact on water resources. Consequently, numerous hydrologists have studied the widely recognized challenge of using climate-change projections to address questions related to management of future water resources. Significant effort has been invested in formulating methods to overcome the difference in spatial scales between available future climate scenarios and water management needs. While numerous downscaling options exist, resource evaluation for the various approaches is rarely discussed; most assessments are focused on evaluating the skill of different methodologies. In this study, a framework is described that water managers can use 1) to identify their climate scenario needs and 2) to assess their financial, computing, time, and workforce resource limitations for climate scenario development. This framework will enable water resource managers to optimize the use of their available resources when developing future climate scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing populations, limited resources, and sustained drought are placing increased pressure on already over-allocated water supplies in the western United States, prompting some water managers to seek out and utilize new forms of climate data in their planning efforts. One source of information that is now being considered by water resource management is extended hydrologic records from tree-ring data. Scientists with the Western Water Assessment (WWA) have been providing reconstructions of streamflow (i.e., paleoclimate data) to water managers in Colorado and other western states (Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming), and presenting technical workshops explaining the applications of tree-ring data for water management for the past eight years. Little is known, however, about what has resulted from these engagements between scientists and water managers. Using in-depth interviews and a survey questionnaire, we attempt to address this lack of information by examining the outcomes of the interactions between WWA scientists and western water managers to better understand how paleoclimate data has been translated to water resource management. This assessment includes an analysis of what prompts water managers to seek out tree-ring data, how paleoclimate data are utilized by water managers in both quantitative and qualitative ways, and how tree-ring data are interpreted in the context of organization mandates and histories. We situate this study within a framework that examines the coproduction of science and policy, where scientists and resource managers collectively define and examine research and planning needs, the activities of which are embedded within wider social and political contexts. These findings have broader applications for understanding science-policy interactions related to climate and climate change in resource management, and point to the potential benefits of reflexive interactions of scientists and decision makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Fiducial method does not need prior information; it accounts for information of data. • Performance of fiducial method is better than SWAT model under small sample cases. • Fiducial method for streamflow prediction is much more time-saving. • Fiducial method can facilitate the hydrological prediction under small sample cases. Hydrological prediction in basins with few data remains an important task for hydrologists given the practical relevance of hydrological prediction for water management and infrastructure design. In this article, fiducial method is applied for hydrological prediction to deal with small sample cases. Fiducial inference can be viewed as a procedure that obtains a measure on a parameter space while assuming less than Bayesian inference does (no prior); it can also be viewed, as a procedure that in a routine algorithmic way finds approximate pivots for parameters of interest, which is one of the main goals of frequential inference. In addition, fiducial methods require only the information from samples (streamflow data). Such that fiducial methods can account for valid information of streamflow observation and avoid model uncertainties. Three goodness-of-fit performance measures in terms of width of prediction interval (PI), accuracy and comprehensive measure will be examined to demonstrate the feasibility of fiducial method in hydrological prediction. Soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) based on Bayesian inference is used for comparison. Results show that (a) the performance of sharpness for the two methods is basically same under small nominal coverage; (b) fiducial PI can captures more observations with the similar width; (c) prediction performance of fiducial method is more satisfactory than SWAT based on Bayesian inference under small sample cases according to interval skill score; (d) fiducial method for hydrological prediction is much more time-saving than SWAT based on Bayesian inference. In summary, fiducial method has significant implications in increasing the performance and efficiency for hydrological prediction under small sample cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Models were developed to overcome shortcomings of traditional meta-analyses. • Models for smalls scales proposed around 1990 were not widely used. • Practical models focusing on specific contexts began to be developed around 2000. • Forest hydrologists should develop practical models for collective decision-making. There exist very few reviews of models that predict changes in evapotranspiration with forest management (e.g., clearcutting and thinning). This omission has potentially prevented forest hydrologists from effectively identifying critical research topics and collaborating with policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in related fields to assist policymaking. To remedy this omission, the current study elaborates why models were needed in the first place and how models were developed historically. Models were developed to overcome limitations of traditional meta-analyses of measurement studies (i.e., inability to explain between-site variations in evapotranspiration changes with forest management) that had been recognized since the 1960s. With the improvement of the understandings about evapotranspiration processes, forest hydrologists proposed models that could predict changes in evapotranspiration with forest management around 1990. Among the models proposed around 1990, models for large scales were widely used for practical purposes (e.g., assessing the impact of large-scale deforestation on the continental and global water cycle). However, models for small scales were not widely used for assessing the impacts of forest management on water resources and other practical purposes. One major reason for this was that models for small scales proposed around 1990 were primarily designed as research tools. To improve practical applicability, forest hydrologists then started developing simple, practical models for small scales that focused on applications to a particular area, species, and purpose around 2000. Considering the necessity of human society to adapt to emerging environmental challenges within a limited time frame, we conclude that the primary role of forest hydrologists in this era is to quickly detect emerging environmental challenges and then develop practical models for connecting different stakeholders for collective decision-making. This paper also suggests that the use of practical models can be a starting point to rearticulate the role of forest hydrologists in policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperation of the Danube countries in the area of hydrology started in 1961, hosting the first conference on hydrological forecast in Budapest. The conference took place even before the International Hydrological Decade was proclaimed (1965-1975). That 10-year program provided an important stimulus to international collaboration in hydrology, and after them, the International Hydrological Programme of UNESCO established. Since 1975, cooperation between hydrologists of the Danube River Basin has been conducted within the framework of the International Hydrological Programme (IHP) of UNESCO. Up to day, XXVII conferences derived hosted by different Danube river countries.At the beginning, cooperation was related to discharge forecast, but later on the research extended on hydrological bases of the water management. The results of scientific achievement were integrated and published in well-known monography »Hydrology of The River Danube« in year 1986. The monography is until now the major integrated approach on water regime of the Danube River and its tributaries. Inside the IHP UNESCO Committees cooperation, several common projects are going on supported by modest national sources. Some of research published in the book "Hydrological processes of the Danube river basin: perspectives from the Danubian countries".In the presentation overlook on the IHP UNESCO Danube Basin present with short description of the reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]