Hydrology in the 21st Century with Dr Murugesu Sivapalan

Professor Murugesu Sivapalan shares how the field of hydrology has evolved over the past few decades, on Season 2, Episode 5 of the Water Data Podcast.

Prof Murugesu Sivapalan is the Chester and Helen Siess Endowed Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr Sivapalan is an award-winning academic and was founding chair of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) Decade on Predictions in Ungauged Basins (PUB) initiative. His work on Predictions in Ungauged Basins as well as in socio-hydrology have shaped the discipline of hydrology as we know it today.

Host Veena Srinivasan talks to Dr Murugesu Sivapalan about his rich career of starting out with hydrological modelling, and early explorations into collecting and analysing hydrological data to infer how complex catchment and river basin systems functioned.

Hydrology is the science of the movement, distribution and management of water. Dr Sivapalan walks us through how the ‘Predictions in Ungauged Basins’ decade pushed people to better understand the physical processes around the hydrological cycle, beyond statistical analyses and calibrated models. He shares how catchments co-evolved with the biology they sustained, and how they shaped each other.

Dr Sivapalan goes on to talk about socio-hydrology, and how human activities also shape river basins and water systems, and vice versa. He explores how it is impossible to understand water systems today without paying close attention to human behaviour and human actions.

Suggested Readings:

1. Dr. Murugesu Sivapalan on Google Scholar
2. Jothityangkoon, C., M. Sivapalan, and D. L. Farmer. “Process controls of water balance variability in a large semi-arid catchment: downward approach to hydrological model development.” Journal of hydrology 254, no. 1-4 (2001): 174-198.
3. Unit Hydrograph: Video
4. Predictions in Ungauged Basins: IAHS Decade 2003-12
5. Panta Rhei – Everything Flows: The 2nd IAHS Scientific Decade 2013-2022
6. HELPING – Science For Water Solutions Decade: The 3rd IAHS Scientific Decade 2023-2032.
7. Sivapalan, Murugesu, Hubert HG Savenije, and Günter Blöschl. “Socio-hydrology: A new science of people and water.” Hydrol. Process 26, no. 8 (2012): 1270-1276.
8. Wagener, Thorsten, Murugesu Sivapalan, Peter A. Troch, Brian L. McGlynn, Ciaran J. Harman, Hoshin V. Gupta, Praveen Kumar, P. Suresh C. Rao, Nandita B. Basu, and Jennifer S. Wilson. “The future of hydrology: An evolving science for a changing world.” Water Resources Research 46, no. 5 (2010).
9. Van Emmerik, T. H. M., Zheng Li, M. Sivapalan, S. Pande, Jaya Kandasamy, H. H. G. Savenije, A. Chanan, and S. Vigneswaran. “Socio-hydrologic modeling to understand and mediate the competition for water between agriculture development and environmental health: Murrumbidgee River basin, Australia.” Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 18, no. 10 (2014): 4239-4259.
10. Sivapalan, Murugesu. “Debates—Perspectives on socio‐hydrology: Changing water systems and the “tyranny of small problems”—Socio‐hydrology.” Water Resources Research 51, no. 6 (2015): 4795-4805.
11. Srinivasan, Veena, M. Sanderson, M. Garcia, M. Konar, Günter Blöschl, and M. Sivapalan. “Prediction in a socio-hydrological world.” Hydrological Sciences Journal 62, no. 3 (2017): 338-345.
12. Di Baldassarre, Giuliano, Murugesu Sivapalan, Maria Rusca, Christophe Cudennec, Margaret Garcia, Heidi Kreibich, Megan Konar et al. “Sociohydrology: scientific challenges in addressing the sustainable development goals.” Water Resources Research 55, no. 8 (2019): 6327-6355.
    

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