Research on coupled socio‐ecohydrological systems—implementing a highly integrative and interdisciplinary research agenda in the Doctoral School “Human River Systems in the 21st Century (HR21)”

Abstract

The access to an adequate quantity and quality of water is vital to sustain healthy ecosystems and human socioeconomic development. However, the shift from an agrarian, solar energy based to an industrialized, fossil fuel‐based socio‐metabolic regime has put natural water resources under stress and led to dramatic transformations of riverine landscapes in the Anthropocene. Thus, we need interdisciplinary research approaches that integrate the knowledge and methods from ecology, humanities, and engineering. The Doctoral School “Human River Systems in the 21st Century” (HR21) studies riverine landscapes as coupled socio‐ecohydrological systems (SEHS) within four research clusters, that is, connectivity, metabolism, vulnerability, and governance. HR21 analyzes the transformation processes and coevolution of nature and society in rivers and their response to future environmental, social, cultural, and economic drivers of change. HR21 aims to improve the understanding of the coupling of the socioeconomic, ecological, and hydrological systems within industrialized riverine landscapes to support their urgent, more sustainable transformation. To discuss how this agenda can be implemented, five different HR21 PhD projects are presented, clearly routed in one scientific domain, applying a combination of the research clusters and addressing various topics: (i) hydropower effects in high alpine river ecosystems, (ii) wastewater impacts on carbon storage and greenhouse gas fluxes in tropical wetlands, (iii) the nutrient retention and ecosystem service potential of floodplains in large river catchments, and the influence of hydrometeorological variables on (iv) the runoff response and on (v) the transit time distribution of runoff, both impacting water resource management at the basin level. These examples highlight how disciplinary PhD research can be framed within an interdisciplinary research agenda to coupled SEHS.