Blöschl (2026) Five principles for hydrology in the era of managed waters

Identification

• Journal: Nature Water
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-05-28
• Authors: Günter Blöschl
• DOI: 10.1038/s44221-026-00657-2

Research Groups

• Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
• Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering, University of Bologna, Italy

Short Summary

This perspective article proposes five guiding principles for the field of hydrology to adapt to the "era of managed waters," arguing that the discipline must shift toward learning from patterns to understand processes across multiple scales.

Objective

• To define a new conceptual and strategic framework (consisting of five principles) for hydrology to effectively address the challenges of human-managed water systems.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Global / Cross-scale (conceptual)
• Temporal Scale: Long-term / Future-oriented perspective

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Not applicable (Conceptual synthesis/World View article)
• Data sources: Synthesis of existing hydrological literature and theoretical frameworks

Main Results

• The author posits that the evolution of hydrology requires a transition where learning from observed patterns is used as the primary vehicle to understand underlying physical processes across different scales.

Contributions

• Provides a theoretical roadmap for the hydrological community to transition from traditional process-based hydrology to a framework capable of handling the complexities of anthropogenically managed water cycles.

Funding

• Not specified in the provided text.

Citation

@article{Blöschl2026Five,
  author = {Blöschl, Günter},
  title = {Five principles for hydrology in the era of managed waters},
  journal = {Nature Water},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1038/s44221-026-00657-2},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-026-00657-2}
}