Time scale interactions and the coevolution of humans and water: TIME SCALE INTERACTIONS AND COEVOLUTION OF HUMANS AND WATER
Open accessAbstract
We present a coevolutionary view of hydrologic systems, revolving around feedbacks between environmental and social processes operating across different time scales. This brings to the fore an emphasis on emergent phenomena in changing water systems, such as the levee effect, adaptation to change, system lock-in, and system collapse due to resource depletion. Changing human values play a key role in the emergence of these phenomena and should therefore be considered as internal to the system. Guidance is provided for the framing and modeling of these phenomena to test alternative hypotheses about how they arose. A plurality of coevolutionary models, from stylized to comprehensive system-of-system models, may assist strategic water management for long time scales through facilitating stakeholder participation, exploring the possibility space of alternative futures, and helping to synthesize the observed dynamics in a wide range of case studies. Future research opportunities lie in exploring emergent phenomena arising from time scale interactions through historical, comparative, and process studies of human-water feedbacks.
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In Europe, mill streams and their associated leats and sluices can be considered an example of coevolutionary socio-ecohydrological systems, whereby over hundreds of years natural streams were modified to drive mills, which were later closed, leaving behind a hydrological legacy of remnant constructed channels.
“Indeed, in Europe mill streams and their associated leats and sluices can be considered an example of coevolutionary socio-ecohydrological systems (sensu Sivapalan & Blöschl 48 ), whereby over hundreds of years natural streams were modified to drive mills, which were later closed, leaving behind a hydrological legacy of remnant constructed channels 50 .”
From Lines in the landscape (2025) · cites this paper as [48]
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References 199 · Cited by 353
Research works printed but not linked: 4
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- Carr, G., D. P. Loucks and G. Bl€ oschl (2013), An analysis of public participation in the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River study, in Water Co- Management, edited by V. I. Gover and G. Kratzenberg, pp. 48-77, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Fla.
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- Authors
- Sivapalan, M., & Blöschl, G.
- Affiliations
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
- TU Wien (AT)
- Corresponding author
- Sivapalan, Murugesu
- Venue
- Water Resources Research
- Publisher
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Published
- 2015-09
- Volume
- 51
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 6988-7022
- ISSN
- 0043-1397 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1951735039
- Cited by
- 353
- References
- 199
- Citations by year
- 2026: 20 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 41 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 64 · 2021: 41 · 2020: 23 · 2019: 22 · 2018: 41 · 2017: 23 · 2016: 26 · 2015: 2
- FWCI
- 25.15
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Water Resources Research (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- ERC Advanced grant “Flood Change” (291152)
- Austrian Science Funds (FWF) “Doctoral Program on Water Resource Systems” (W1219-N22)
- NSF Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (DBI-1052875)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Sustainability and Climate Change Governance
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Water Science and Technology › Environmental Science and Water Management
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Ocean Engineering › Water resources management and optimization
- Keywords
- hydrological systems, emergence, adaptation to change, system collapse, resource depletion, human values, water management, stakeholder engagement, alternative futures
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