A Map of the Future of Water and the Urgent Need for Greater Transdisciplinarity in Hydrology
Abstract
The realities of climate change, population growth and human mismanagement of water resources are driving dramatic changes in our shared water future. Our research team has spent nearly two decades building a satellite-based map that clearly shows how global freshwater availability is changing in response to these forces. The resulting map paints an unsettling picture of an increasingly water insecure world, as well as of the compelling need for hydrologists to more deeply engage with society on adaptation and mitigation strategies. For example, in our map, we see that the wet, high and low latitude regions of the world are in fact getting wetter, while the dry mid-latitudes are getting drier, just as predicted by the IPCC, but for end of the 21st century. We see that Earth's ice sheets and glaciers are rapidly melting, fueling steadily increasing sea level. We see clear evidence of regional changes in the extremes of flooding and drought. And we see that over half of the world's major aquifers have passed sustainability tipping points in response to overpumping to irrigate agriculture, and are being rapidly depleted. Taken together, this map shows that global water security, and with it, global food security, are at far greater risk than most people realize, including environmental decision makers, policy makers and elected officials. In order to affect much needed change, we posit that the need for transdisciplinarity in hydrology - that is, interdisciplinarity research conducted in collaboration with non-scientific stakeholder engagement - has never been greater. In this talk we make the case for the urgent need for deep stakeholder engagement, including greatly increasing the number of co-developed research projects. We argue that science communication should be a cornerstone of hydrologic training and practice, and that hydrologists have a responsibility to educate the public. Finally, we discuss the need to remove impediments to accelerating transdisciplinary research, including changes to the tenure and promotion system that will reward stakeholder-engaged research, including non-traditional accomplishments such as raising public awareness or impacting policy.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.H11J1613F
- Keywords:
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- 1899 General or miscellaneous;
- HYDROLOGY