Name
H6 - Scaling and Heterogeneity in Hydrology:Towards Transferable Understanding and Prediction
Description
Hydrological science seeks general understanding from systems that are intrinsically
heterogeneous and observed at finite scales. Yet processes and relationships identified at a
point, hillslope, reach, or catchment may change, disappear, or reorganize at larger scales.
Differences in climate, geology, topography, soils, vegetation, and land use can further alter
both the expression and relative importance of hydrological processes. A fundamental
challenge therefore remains: when, where, and why does hydrological knowledge transfer
across scales and environments? This session places transferability at the center of scaling
and heterogeneity in hydrology. We invite contributions that examine which hydrological
relationships, process representations, parameters, signatures, and predictive structures
generalize across scales and environments; which remain context dependent; and what
failures of transfer reveal about unresolved processes, scale dependencies, and model
assumptions. Of particular interest are studies that distinguish robust hydrological
organization from apparent relationships that emerge only at particular observational
scales, under specific environmental conditions, or within particular datasets. We welcome
observational, experimental, theoretical, and modeling studies spanning surface and
subsurface hydrology. Relevant contributions include comparative and large-sample
analyses, cross-scale observations and experiments, hydrological similarity and
classification, regionalization and prediction in ungauged or data-sparse systems, and
explicit tests of model and parameter transferability. Process-based, statistical, machinelearning,
hybrid, and physics-informed approaches are encouraged where they help identify
and explain the controls on generalization rather than merely reproduce observed patterns.
The goal is to move beyond documenting heterogeneity toward establishing the domains of
validity of hydrological knowledge: what can be transferred, across which scales and
environments, under what conditions, and with what uncertainty? Resolving these questions
is essential for developing hydrological understanding and prediction that extend beyond
the individual catchments, observations, datasets, and models from which they originate.
Convenors
Fatemeh Ganjalikhan Hakemi (University of Waterloo); Christophe Darnault (Clemson University)
Joint Session With
Biogeosciences
Session Type
Session