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

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.

M. P. González-Dugo | Ronald R. P. van Nooijen | Pablo Borges de Amorim | M. Hipsey | J. McDonnell | K. Beven | D. Loucks | P. Claps | R. Sidle | A. Scolobig | R. Rigon | B. Croke | A. Castelletti | G. Destouni | C. Neale | M. Brilly | D. Tarboton | B. Arheimer | M. Clark | R. Woods | R. Rosso | E. Toth | A. Montanari | T. Illangasekare | R. Uijlenhoet | E. Wood | L. Brocca | D. Hannah | G. Thirel | M. Ramos | C. Perrin | H. Kreibich | M. Bierkens | P. Ward | E. Lindquist | G. Blöschl | J. Seibert | S. Maskey | M. Riva | L. Pfister | H. Savenije | M. Kirkby | G. Ferguson | M. Sivapalan | A. Castellarin | G. Baldassarre | Ashish Sharma | Junguo Liu | Zongxue Xu | R. Dwivedi | I. Steinsland | A. Schumann | O. Batelaan | Z. Pang | V. Baker | Xiaohong Chen | E. Servat | J. Kirchner | T. Link | V. Andréassian | D. Post | G. Boulet | H. Lange | C. White | Hristos Tyralis | A. Wade | C. Cudennec | S. Pande | F. Tian | A. Viglione | T. Gleeson | M. Liberato | E. Gaume | S. Grimaldi | F. Nardi | E. Istanbulluoglu | D. Finger | B. Schaefli | R. Ent | H. Müller-Thomy | T. Blume | Z. Kalantari | J. Salinas | S. Krause | M. Sidibe | G. Mahé | H. Kunstmann | S. Gascoin | A. Collins | E. Ridolfi | H. Aksoy | Hugh G. Smith | Ben Jarihani | S. Ferraris | J. Kiesel | E. Eris | V. Odongo | P. R. Oel | K. Heal | C. Luce | B. Fersch | M. Hrachowitz | W. Buytaert | M. Ploeg | G. Carr | G. D. Rooij | M. Shafiei | J. Malard | M. Renner | A. Bartošová | W. Berghuijs | R. V. Beek | A. Harpold | A. V. Loon | W. Farmer | C. Stumpp | James Feiccabrino | A. Dathe | J. Vidal | K. Yilmaz | T. Bogaard | B. Széles | R. V. Nooijen | A. Kolechkina | G. Salvadori | K. Tussupova | T. Skaugen | M. Mazzoleni | K. Fowler | E. Volpi | S. Aryal | K. Breinl | U. Strasser | M. Böttcher | D. Robertson | B. Misstear | B. Guse | L. Holko | M. Glendell | A. Chambel | A. Fiori | Claire Lupton | S. Allen | Anam Amin | E. Bardsley | M. Barendrecht | Yangbo Chen | Yuan-Chao Chen | P. Chifflard | Paula C. David | F. D. Barros | J. Driscoll | D. Duethmann | E. Ferrari | L. Foglia | B. Gartsman | A. Gelfan | J. Geris | S. Gharari | A. G. Bevacqua | A. Gupta | Dawei Han | S. Haun | K. Helfricht | M. Herrnegger | Hana Hlaváčiková | Clara Hohmann | C. Hopkinson | A. Inam | Camyla Innocente | A. Kalvāns | Sonu Khanal | S. Khatami | W. Knoben | K. Kochanek | S. Kohnová | D. Kreamer | O. Makarieva | Shamshagul Mashtayeva | J. Mas-Pla | Maria Mavrova-Guirguinova | S. Mernild | A. Nabizadeh | N. Nesterova | B. Nurtaev | S. Panda | Georgia Papacharalampous | R. Pimentel | M. Polo | C. P. Sierra | J. E. Reynolds | Tirthankar Roy | J. H. Sá | M. Sandells | S. Spiessl | L. Stein | B. Su | J. Szolgay | F. Tauro | R. Tong | I. Meerveld | J. Freyberg | S. Vorogushyn | P. Wachniew | I. Westerberg | Yongqiang Zhang | H. Smith | Jens Kiesel | S. Khanal | Anna Scolobig | Lina Stein

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