Moving sociohydrology forward: a synthesis across studies

Abstract

Abstract. Sociohydrology is the study of coupled humanwater 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 Anthropocene", includes a number of sociohydrologic publications that allow for a survey of the current state of understanding of sociohydrology and the dynamics and feedbacks 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 sociohydrologic systems. Although sociohydrology is concerned with coupled human-water systems, the feedback may be filtered 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 complex system, sociohydrology can draw on tools developed in the social-ecological and complex systems literature to further our sociohydrologic knowledge, and this is identified as a ripe area of future research.

Human–water interface in hydrological modelling: current status and future directions

“…Many sociohydrological models consist of coupled differential equations that capture the dynamics of the studied system. However, it is unclear whether this is because of over-parameterization or mathematical correctness (Troy et al, 2015a;Mount et al, 2016). Either way, it is time for socio-hydrology to move beyond individual case studies and find generalized but locally relevant descriptions of changes in the (large-scale) humanwater system (McMillan et al, 2016).…”

“…For a more recent example, Kandasamy et al (2014) revealed a "pendulum" swing in the Murrumbidgee River basin, where population first increased, driven by agricultural development, and later decreased, driven by environmental restoration being more favoured over agriculture. In recent years several socio-hydrological models have been developed (Blair and Buytaert, 2016;Troy et al, 2015a). Di Baldassarre et al (2013a, b) and Viglione et al (2014) developed a conceptual "toy model" that explores the dynamics of a floodplain as a coupled human-water system.…”

Drought and flood in the Anthropocene: feedback mechanisms in reservoir operation

“…To overcome this lack of knowledge, there has been increasing interest in socio-hydrology in the last few years (e.g. Sivapalan et al, 2012;Srinivasan et al, 2012;Di Baldassarre et al, 2013b;Montanari et al, 2013;Schumann and Nijssen, 2014;Viglione et al, 2014;Elshafey et al, 2014;Van Emmerick et al, 2014;Sivapalan and Bloeschl, 2015;Loucks, 2015;Troy et al, 2015;Gober and Weather, 2015;Pande and Savenije, 2016;Blair and Buytaert, 2016), which aims to develop fundamental science underpinning integrated water resources management (IWRM). Socio-hydrology builds on a long tradition of studies exploring the interplay of nature and society and the implications for sustainability, including political ecology, social-ecological systems, ecologic economics, complex system theories, and research on planetary boundaries (Swyngedouw, 1999;Folke et al, 2005;Liu et al, 2007;Ostrom, 2009;Rockström et al, 2009;Kallis and Norgaard, 2010).…”

A framework for modelling the complexities of food and water security under globalisation

“…However, socio-hydrological studies maintain a disciplinary focus on water, failing to capture important sectoral interdependencies as IAMs do (Troy et al, 2015). Equally, they have so far assumed the systems of concern are isolated entities in space, e.g.…”

“…These emergent higher-level changes may feed back on the finer scale. In terms of water resources, socio-hydrological studies have played an important role in helping to understand emergent water use patterns by capturing cross-scale socio-environmental feedbacks (Di Baldassarre et al, 2013a, b;Montanari et al, 2013;Sivapalan et al, 2012;Troy et al, 2015). They have done so by explicitly considering bidirectional feedbacks between humans and the environment in hydrological basins.…”