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Coupled human‐water systems (CHWS) are diverse and have been studied across a wide variety of disciplines. Integrating multiple disciplinary perspectives on CHWS provides a comprehensive and actionable understanding of these complex systems. While interdisciplinary integration has often remained elusive, specific combinations of disciplines might be comparably easier to integrate (compatible), and/or their combination might be particularly likely to uncover previously unobtainable insights (complementary). This paper systematically identifies such promising combinations by mapping disciplines along a common set of topical, philosophical, and methodological dimensions. It also identifies key challenges and lessons for multidisciplinary research teams seeking to integrate highly promising (complementary) but poorly compatible disciplines. Applied to eight disciplines that span the environmental physical sciences and the quantitative and qualitative social sciences, we found that promising combinations of disciplines identified by the typology broadly reproduce patterns of recent interdisciplinary collaborative research revealed by a bibliometric analysis. We also found that some disciplines are centrally located within the typology by being compatible and complementary to multiple other disciplines along distinct dimensions. This points to the potential for these disciplines to act as catalysts for wider interdisciplinary integration.

This article is categorized under:

Engineering Water > Methods

Human Water > Methods

Science of Water > Methods

 

Abstract The Mekong River basin (MRB) is a transboundary basin that supports livelihoods of over 70 million inhabitants and diverse terrestrial-aquatic ecosystems. This critical lifeline for people and ecosystems is under transformation due to climatic stressors and human activities (e.g., land use change and dam construction). Thus, there is an urgent need to better understand the changing hydrological and ecological systems in the MRB and develop improved adaptation strategies. This, however, is hampered partly by lack of sufficient, reliable, and accessible observational data across the basin. Here, we fill this long-standing gap for MRB by synthesizing climate, hydrological, ecological, and socioeconomic data from various disparate sources. The data— including groundwater records digitized from the literature—provide crucial insights into surface water systems, groundwater dynamics, land use patterns, and socioeconomic changes. The analyses presented also shed light on uncertainties associated with various datasets and the most appropriate choices. These datasets are expected to advance socio-hydrological research and inform science-based management decisions and policymaking for sustainable food-energy-water, livelihood, and ecological systems in the MRB. 

Global water models are increasingly used to understand past, present and future water cycles, but disagreements between simulated variables make model-based inferences uncertain. Although there is empirical evidence of different large-scale relationships in hydrology, these relationships are rarely considered in model evaluation. Here we evaluate global water models using functional relationships that capture the spatial co-variability of forcing variables (precipitation, net radiation) and key response variables (actual evapotranspiration, groundwater recharge, total runoff). Results show strong disagreement in both shape and strength of model-based functional relationships, especially for groundwater recharge. Empirical and theory-derived functional relationships show varying agreements with models, indicating that our process understanding is particularly uncertain for energy balance processes, groundwater recharge processes and in dry and/or cold regions. Functional relationships offer great potential for model evaluation and an opportunity for fundamental advances in global hydrology and Earth system research in general.

 

Abstract Water resources sustainability in High Mountain Asia (HMA) surrounding the Tibetan Plateau (TP)—known as Asia’s water tower—has triggered widespread concerns because HMA protects millions of people against water stress 1,2 . However, the mechanisms behind the heterogeneous trends observed in terrestrial water storage (TWS) over the TP remain poorly understood. Here we use a Lagrangian particle dispersion model and satellite observations to attribute about 1 Gt of monthly TWS decline in the southern TP during 2003–2016 to westerlies-carried deficit in precipitation minus evaporation (PME) from the southeast North Atlantic. We further show that HMA blocks the propagation of PME deficit into the central TP, causing a monthly TWS increase by about 0.5 Gt. Furthermore, warming-induced snow and glacial melt as well as drying-induced TWS depletion in HMA weaken the blocking of HMA’s mountains, causing persistent northward expansion of the TP’s TWS deficit since 2009. Future projections under two emissions scenarios verified by satellite observations during 2020–2021 indicate that, by the end of the twenty-first century, up to 84% (for scenario SSP245) and 97% (for scenario SSP585) of the TP could be afflicted by TWS deficits. Our findings indicate a trajectory towards unsustainable water systems in HMA that could exacerbate downstream water stress. 

Abstract Eurasia, home to ~70% of global population, is characterized by (semi-)arid climate. Water scarcity in the mid-latitude Eurasia (MLE) has been exacerbated by a consistent decline in terrestrial water storage (TWS), attributed primarily to human activities. However, the atmospheric mechanisms behind such TWS decline remain unclear. Here, we investigate teleconnections between drying in low-latitude North Atlantic Ocean (LNATO) and TWS depletions across MLE. We elucidate mechanistic linkages and detecte high correlations between decreased TWS in MLE and the decreased precipitation-minus-evapotranspiration (PME) in LNATO. TWS in MLE declines by ~257% during 2003-2017 due to northeastward propagation of PME deficit following two distinct seasonal landfalling routes during January-May and June-January. The same mechanism reduces TWS during 2031-2050 by ~107% and ~447% under scenarios SSP245 and SSP585, respectively. Our findings highlight the risk of increased future water scarcity across MLE caused by large-scale climatic drivers, compounding the impacts of human activities.