Themes / Program

Significant progress has been made in computational social sciences, the use of new, unconventional data, data sharing and in integrating quantitative and qualitative data to better understand and model human-water systems. However, less progress has been made in using sociohydrological models to develop future projections, and to successfully design, implement and evaluate interventions. The growing academic understanding of real world human-water systems needs to be used better to design effective interventions for sustainable development. In order to provide solutions to diverse water challenges, while acknowledging that fixes often backfire because critical human-water feedbacks are not recognised or are ignored, this theme focuses on:

1. studies that use novel (unconventional) data and data science, integrate quantitative and qualitative data, identify means to fill data gaps or build community open access datasets to better understand human-water system dynamics.
2. studies that improve predictions of coupled trajectories and develop future projections of human-water systems.
3. modeling effects of interventions in emergent phenomena and predictions of possibility (solution) spaces based on co-identified scenarios.
4. intervention design and implementation studies that enhance adoption of the interventions based on empirically grounded behavioral and social methods.
5. educational models to train the next generation of young minds on transdisciplinary methods and coupled human-water systems competencies.

Social inequalities in water distribution and the role of power in water infrastructure development impact sociohydrological systems. However, some approaches to solving water issues exclude or ignore the knowledge and experiences of certain groups. Participatory Action Research (PAR) and citizen science are two of many methods that have been proposed to empower scientists and end users to solve water problems together. This theme is dedicated to engaging local and Indigenous communities in water decision-making and other innovative research praxes that advance water sustainability and justice goals. This theme focuses on:

1. Social inequities and how they impact water governance and justice
2. Legal and governance connections between sociohydrology approaches and local cultural and Indigenous waters
3. Co-identified interventions at appropriate landscape and governance levels through participatory approaches
4. Deep understandings of local value systems, participatory decision-making, and shared risks
5. Emerging ethical considerations and evaluations for high-quality, responsible research, and
6. Gender, race, age, income, ability, nationality and other intersectionality considerations resulting from unequal access to water

Generating knowledge with the potential to advance transformative policies requires co-involvement of natural and social scientists, policy makers, practitioners, and the local communities that experience most significantly the impacts of water-related challenges and related development struggles. In this context, sociohydrology can play a crucial role in crafting sustainable water futures that respect and acknowledge site and time-specific particularities and a wide range of perspectives, including those based on lived experiences and intergenerational knowledge. How can we ensure that sociohydrology is part of the discussion and contributes to more inclusive knowledge-to-action (K2A) pathways and equitable water governance? To answer such question, this theme focuses on:

1. Pluralising water knowledge through interdisciplinary engagement that combines natural and (critical) social sciences to generate power-sensitive and justice-focussed accounts of hydrological change.
2. Conceptualizing approaches and empirical examples of knowledge co-creation that recognise the value of different forms of knowledge, indigenous knowledge, and gendered and local voices, to investigate new causalities and address water related challenges at multiple scales.
3. Mapping models and paradigms to break barriers and make science-society work in closer synergy, integrating sociohydrological and hydrosocial sciences.
4. Investigating the potential of collaborative interactive governance in conflict-laden transboundary basins.
5. Promoting the role of qualitative insights such as ethnography, visualization techniques and novel digital/open science means to generate transdisciplinary knowledge.
6. And finally, acknowledging ways to navigate through and take responsibility for the entanglements between sociohydrological and hydrosocial science and politics.

Over the past decade, several scholars have explored the sociohydrological dynamics emerging in flood, drought, agricultural, mountain and global systems. More recently, sociohydrology has increasingly engaged with public health and energy production challenges, as well as environmental justice aspects related to e.g. the vulnerability of marginalized communities, or uneven distribution of costs and benefits of water infrastructure. Concurrently, there is a need to complement the work on changes over time, e.g. long term dynamics generated by feedback loops, with more work on spatial heterogeneity, e.g. how sociohydrological crises, risks and opportunities are distributed across social groups or sectors. This theme focuses on studies that:

1. explore and navigate tradeoffs and synergies between different water users, e.g. in a nexus context such as the water-energy-food-environment nexus.
2. engage with challenges around water quantity and quality, particularly where they link with public and environmental health issues (e.g. contamination outbreaks and biodiversity loss).
3. unravel the heterogeneity of both social vulnerabilities and biophysical processes related with water quality (e.g. riverine pollution) and quantity (e.g. floods and droughts).
4. investigate differential access to water resources, e.g. water injustice, as well as costs and benefits of interventions and their unintended consequences, e.g. exacerbating social inequalities.

To understand the complex interactions between human and water systems, this theme explores archetypes of sociohydrological phenomena across spatio-temporal scales. By integrating comparative studies in each of these regions and phenomena, this theme aims to gain a deeper understanding of past and present human-water dynamics and their changes. It fosters a comprehensive classification and comparison research framework. By integrating the knowledge gained, archetypes that encompass common interaction patterns and collective resilience to extreme events such as floods and droughts can be identified. This theme includes:

1. historical processes and regime shifts of human-water interactions and their regional comparison.
2. identify new phenomena, investigate/unpack phenomena through modeling/ narratives, or classify/synthesize existing phenomena into universal archetypes through comparative studies.
3. provide generic/transferable insights into resilience of systems witnessing an archetype.
4. identify sociohydrological dynamics across spatio-temporal scales.