Hydrologic Sciences Taking Stock and Looking Ahead (1998) / Chapter Skim
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A key objective of the committee in writing the report was to delineate a "puzzledriven" science underlying, and complementary to, the "problem-driven" application of that science and attendant technology to problems of water resources. Although the discipline does overlap and "interact" with ocean, atmospheric, and solid earth sciences, as well as ecosystem sciences, the committee views hydrologic science as distinct and unique among the sciences in its focus on continental water processes and the global water balance.
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Instead, the board decided to use the occasion of the seventh Abel Wolman Distinguished Lecture to direct the hydrologic community's attention to the vitality of the hydrologic sciences. The board attempted to do this in two ways: first, by challenging the Wolman Lecturer to use the bully pulpit of the Wolman Lecture to reflect freely and personally on the intellectual vitality of the hydrologic sciences; and second, by organizing a oneday symposium that would build on the Wolman Lecture by expounding on some
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Abel Wolman (1892-1989) is the subject of the very first biographical vignette
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This, then, was the starting point for the 1997 Wolman Lecture and Symposium on the Hydrologic Sciences and the papers contained in this volume. These papers both explicitly and implicitly assess progress on a number of issues from the perspective of particular "puzzle areas" in hydrologic science.
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He finds further support for this conclusion in the continuing lack of communication, and even intellectual respect, across the artificial boundaries of experimentalist versus theorist, modeler versus field observer, engineer versus earth scientist. The promise and excitement of the growing number of new data sources available to hydrologists are tempered by the recognition that hydrologists have not yet found a way to participate fully in the design of data collection campaigns so that they may contribute directly to the advancement of fundamental hydrologic science.
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Finally, although not emphasized by McKnight, it is equally clear that ecological processes play much more than a passive role in controlling hydrologic processes. In assessing hydrologic science vis-a-vis aquatic ecosystems, McKnight emphasizes the complexities of spatial and temporal scales and of scale mismatches, in both space and time.
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As discussant Dara Entekhabi stated at the symposium, hydrology has "transitioned from an era characterized by data starvation to [one characterized by] data confusion." GROUND WATER DATING AND ISOTOPE CHEMISTRY Environmental tracers received relatively little direct attention in Opportunities in the Hydrologic Sciences but played an important role there nonetheless.
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Environmental tracers, with applications to the unsaturated subsurface, shallow aquifers, deep aquifers, and regional flow systems, as well as surface-subsurface interactions, have achieved new prominence as much of the focus of hydrologic applications has shifted from water supply to water quality. Once again, central issues are characterizing fluxes, reservoirs, and change, and the broad range of spatial and temporal scales over which the physico-chemical processes controlling tracer movement occur.
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Successful streamflow prediction is impossible without knowledge from all of these domains, and the "grand challenge" of hydrologic science is the coherent coupling of knowledge in all of these domains across a full range of spatial and temporal scales. SUMMARY Taken together, the Wolman Lecturer and the symposium speakers and discussants provide a consistent diagnosis of the vitality of the hydrologic sciences; the science is indeed a vital, intellectually challenging geoscience.
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