Professor Murugesu Sivapalan shares how the field of hydrology has evolved over the past few decades, on Season 2, Episode 5 of the Water Data Podcast.

Prof Murugesu Sivapalan is the Chester and Helen Siess Endowed Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr Sivapalan is an award-winning academic and was founding chair of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) Decade on Predictions in Ungauged Basins (PUB) initiative. His work on Predictions in Ungauged Basins as well as in socio-hydrology have shaped the discipline of hydrology as we know it today.

Host Veena Srinivasan talks to Dr Sivapalan about his rich career of starting out with hydrological modeling, and early explorations into collecting and analysing hydrological data to infer how complex catchment and river basin systems functioned.

Hydrology is the science of the movement, distribution and management of water. Dr Sivapalan walks us through how the ‘Predictions in Ungauged Basins’ decade pushed people to better understand the physical processes around the hydrological cycle, beyond statistical analyses and calibrated models. He shares how catchments co-evolved with the biology they sustained, and how they shaped each other.

Dr Sivapalan goes on to talk about socio-hydrology, and how human activities also shape river basins and water systems, and vice versa. He explores how it is impossible to understand water systems today without paying close attention to human behaviour and human actions.

The Water Data Podcast is a talk show on the science, systems, and stories of water hosted by Veena Srinivasan.

For all references and further readings related to the episode, visit https://welllabs.org/wdp-sivapalan/

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Recording by Nabina Chakraborty. Video editing by Nabina Chakraborty. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.