What a hydrological year it has been! From the winter drought and flash floods detailed in Matano and Avanzi‘s blog post to the remarkably warm and wet November 2023, Europe has witnessed a range of extraordinary weather phenomena. In the Alpine region, the convergence of warm and wet weather resulted in numerous rain-on-snow events (see …[Read More]
Hydrological Sciences
Do-It-Yourself (DIY) in Geoscience Miniseries – Part 1: Microcontrollers
We geoscientists need all different kinds of data: soil moisture, water-levels, snow height, radiation, precipitation height and the list goes on. However, the devices we need to generate that data are often too expensive, not available or even don’t exist. Therefore, it’s sometimes necessary to build them yourself (like many geoscientists do – those who …[Read More]
Interdisciplinary research within hydrology
Interdisciplinary research within hydrology has become a major task for hydrologists. But what are the main advantages and challenges reflecting to break the academic silos? What is interdisciplinary water research? Interdisciplinary research activities within human-water research have increased in recent years, not only in terms of research proposals and requests from funding agencies (such as …[Read More]
Water justice in hydrological research
Water justice has become a crucial discussion in the past decades. Some of the core aspects reflect the questions about who gets involved in the decision-making process, who has access to drinking water, or who gains from flood alleviation schemes. Many hydrologists are struggling to find an answer to these major challenges. The rise of …[Read More]
Towards an exciting EGU General Assembly with HS (and more)
The EGU Programme Committee convened in late October to finalize the scientific program for the upcoming General Assembly, GA2024. Their task involved organizing the numerous session proposals, spanning 22 divisions, including Inter- and Transdisciplinary (ITS) sessions, discussing the format of scientific sessions (do expect news for virtual posters and PICOs at GA2024!), the mentoring programme, …[Read More]
Care to get your boots wet? The ‘Partial Surface Water Challenge’
Inland surface water is a critical resource when scarce and a potential hazard when floods occur. Because the extent of surface water affects habitat condition, weather, and biogeochemical cycles, our ability to accurately track variations in surface water extent is important for resource management, science, commerce, hazard mitigation, and policy making. Openly distributed data derived …[Read More]
How far can we take the DORA rules?
DORA stands for Declaration on Research Assessment, also known as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment. The declaration was developed back in 2012 during the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in San Francisco and has become a worldwide initiative since then. The country where you are currently reading this post …[Read More]
Join the IAHS’ New Scientific Decade: Science for Water Solutions – HELPING
What are the most pressing research topics in the international community of hydrologists? What are people working on? And how can you become involved? Many hydrologists, especially early career scientists, struggle to find answers to these questions. That is where the scientific decades of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) come in. Specifically, its …[Read More]
Ma Terre en 180 Minutes: reducing our carbon footprint with concrete actions
As with all professional activities, one of the greatest challenges for us, geoscientists, is how to reduce our own CO2 emissions linked to our research activities over the coming decades. A collective of 57 researchers came together in 2021-2022 to promote awareness and concrete action to decarbonize scientific activities: it was the birth of Ma …[Read More]
Floods and droughts: two sides of the same hydrological coin
This is not (only) a flood. Inspired by Magritte’s painting: ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ After an alarming dry winter, the European continent has been enduring weeks of a record-breaking heatwave across the southern regions, while coping with scattered, intense precipitation and flash floods. In Zaragoza (Spain), recent flash floods swiftly transformed the previously dry landscape …[Read More]