Moving sociohydrology forward: a synthesis across studies

Sociohydrology is the study of coupled human- water systems, building on the premise that water and human systems co-evolve: the state of the water system feeds back onto the human system, and vice versa, a situation denoted as "two-way coupling". A recent special issue in HESS/ESD, "Predictions under change: water, earth, and biota in the An- thropocene", includes a number of sociohydrologic publi- cations that allow for a survey of the current state of un- derstanding of sociohydrology and the dynamics and feed- backs that couple water and human systems together, of the research methodologies being employed to date, and of the normative and ethical issues raised by the study of socio- hydrologic systems. Although sociohydrology is concerned with coupled human-water systems, the feedback may be fil- tered by a connection through natural or social systems, for example, the health of a fishery or through the global food trade, and therefore it may not always be possible to treat the human-water system in isolation. As part of a larger com- plex system, sociohydrology can draw on tools developed in the social-ecological and complex systems literature to fur- ther our sociohydrologic knowledge, and this is identified as a ripe area of future research.