Mainstreaming Sociohydrology: Towards Designing and Implementing Management Interventions

This Research Topic is part of a series of article collections published within Frontiers in Water for the the 2nd International Sociohydrology Conference.

The other themes within this series are:
- Participatory and Just Governance: Empowering Local and Indigenous Communities.
- Pluralizing Water Knowledge for Inclusive Water Governance: Meaning-making, Co-creation and Transdisciplinarity
- Expanding Socio-hydrology: Embracing Spatial Heterogeneity and Emerging Nexuses.
- Comparative Socio-hydrology Across Places and Scales: Aiming Towards Synthesis.

Watch the Topic Editors discuss the themes of the Research Topics and preview the conference at a recent Townhall: Expanding and Mainstreaming Sociohydrology Toward Transdisciplinary Praxis

Significant progress has been made in computational social sciences, the use of new, unconventional data, data sharing, and integrating quantitative and qualitative data to better understand and model human-water systems. However, less progress has been made in using sociohydrological models to develop future projections, and to successfully design, implement and evaluate interventions. The growing academic understanding of real-world human-water systems needs to be used better to design effective interventions for sustainable development. To provide solutions to diverse water challenges, while acknowledging that fixes often backfire because critical human-water feedbacks are not recognized or is ignored, this theme focuses on:

i) studies that use novel (unconventional) data and data science, integrate quantitative and qualitative data, identify means to fill data gaps, or build community open access datasets to better understand human-water system dynamics.
ii) studies that improve predictions of coupled trajectories and develop future projections of human-water systems.
iii) modeling effects of interventions in emergent phenomena and predictions of possibility (solution) spaces based on co-identified scenarios.
iv) intervention design and implementation studies that enhance the adoption of the interventions based on empirically grounded behavioral and social methods.
v) educational models to train the next generation of young minds on transdisciplinary methods and coupled human-water systems competencies.

Keywords: Interventions, human-water systems, real-world, sustainable development, diverse water challenges

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.