The British Hydrological Society (BHS) is a registered charity and is almost entirely run by volunteers who have chosen to give their time to serve the hydrological community.
Founded in 1983, the BHS is a Specialist Knowledge Society of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE). Its overall aim is to provide interest, good practice, and scholarships in all aspects of hydrology. It also wants to support the involvement of hydrologists in national and international initiatives through meetings and networking events.
Keep yourself in the loop by following the BHS on LinkedIn and on YouTube, plus check its website.
Early Career Hydrologists in the BHS
Within the BHS, the early career sub-committee is focused on addressing the needs of early career researchers (ECS). In October 2024, Giuseppe Degan Di Dieco passed the baton to the new chair of this sub-committee, Dr Amy Green.
To promote its early careers, the BHS provides travel grants, undergraduate dissertation prizes, MSc scholarships, and organises an annual symposium. Two particularly promising opportunities for ECS at the BHS are a short publication in Circulation, the BHS’s quarterly magazine, and presenting their work as part of the monthly series of webinars launched in 2023.
The ECS at BHS also currently have an email list with 70 members to whom you can write via emailing grp-bhs_yhs_ec_talks_newsletter@groups.bristol.ac.uk and ask for trusted help with time series, coding, reproducibility, and anything else you can imagine! You are also very welcome to join the newsletter by filling out this form.
The BHS Magazine: Circulation
Circulation is the BHS’s quarterly magazine. It features intriguing and critical short articles as well as the UK hydrological bulletin.
In order to support the dissemination of work from ECS, the BHS early career committee offers the opportunity of submitting a short piece – 250 words and two pictures – to Circulation for free. To submit your work, please write to Vicky Shackle at: bhs-circulation@outlook.com.
Besides the publishing opportunity, the early career committee organises a talk series for early careers to help them with standing out and being noticed.
The Online Talk Series: Gotta Catch’Em All!
The talk series “Gotta catch’em all” started in January 2023 at the British Library in King’s Cross, London (pictured below).
It is based on an idea of Giuseppe (at the time the national representative of ECS within BHS), with help from Elena Cristiano, Paola Mazzoglio, Eleonora Dallan on behalf of the Young Hydrologic Society (YHS), and Clare Burnell from JBA Consulting Ltd (Jeremy Benn Associates Limited).
A group picture from the first episode of “Gotta catch’em all” on the 17th of January 2023.
The talk series is inspired by the well-known anime and videogame “Pokémon”, from which the series borrowed the motto “Gotta catch’em all: A catchment-by-catchment hydrological adventure”.
The ECS sub-committee is pretty sure that everyone has always wondered about the story and graphics behind a video game. In fact, there is a vast literature about the benefits of turning science and literature into a videogame thanks to software engineering. Therefore, the main idea of this talk series is to make science and learning an enjoyable endeavour for early careers, as it should be.
A Wide Range of Topics and Speakers
Topics discussed by the talk series speakers have ranged from droughts to explainable AI, to digital twins of catchments, and the history of computational models.
In September 2024, the organising team welcomed the EGU Division of Hydrological Sciences (HS) into the crew thanks to Christina Orieschnig and Melissa Reidy, plus Archita Bhattacharyya from Lancaster University.
As of October 2024, the talk series hosted 18 speakers from countries ranging from Australia to Morocco. They came from a total of 14 different institutions, from academia, research institutes, and the private sector.
Our speakers also have different origins to reflect our commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion.
Group picture from the September 2024 episode about computational models.
Become a BHS-YHS Speaker or Host!
We encourage everyone to present their work at our free monthly webinars. They are usually held at noon Central European Time (UTC + 1). Each webinar lasts for one hour. There is usually one presentation which can take up to thirty minutes, followed by a friendly chat with the audience. During your talk, you will find a cosy environment where you are the main character on the stage!
The talk series welcomes any contribution, in a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Maths) education approach. You can present a poem, a song, a stitch, a videogame, or your paper, as long as it is hydrology-related. Plus, it can be in any language you are familiar with, although the vast majority of our speakers choose English.
The ECS sub-committee believes that their talks are a great opportunity for you to stand up for hydrology, to present yourself to the scientific community, receive feedback, and build up your network.
As John Lennon sang in Imagine “I hope someday you will join us, and the world will live as one”. Therefore, we would love to build a network of hydrology buddies to refer to when in need or doubt, a sort of hydrology exchange, like stack exchange but for hydrology topics, and we need every water drop to do so. So, launch your poké ball!
