vEGU21: Our participation and perceptions

The annual General Assembly of the European Geoscience Union 2021 lies behind us, and ICWRGC has participated not only in scientific discussions, but also with presentations and convener responsibilities. Dr. Marianela Fader presented the key results of the water chapter of the MedECC report with the solicited talk “Future water-related risks and management options in the Mediterranean basin” in the session “Changes in the Mediterranean hydrology: observation and modeling”. Renee van Dongen was co-convener of the networking session “Crowd-solving Problems in Earth Sciences” in which i.a. alternatives for fieldwork-based research were discussed. Dr. Stephan Dietrich presented a contribution with the title “Global Terrestrial Network of Water Resources Observation Infrastructures“ in the session “The Importance of Being Global – Globally coordinated Research Infrastructures to support the UN system”. ICWRGC-colleagues Harald Koethe, Denise Cáceres and Stephan Dietrich were also co-authors of the presentation “Co-developing a data and knowledge portal to support stakeholder risk assessments with uncertain, global, multi-model based information on hydrological hazards of climate change”, which was showcased by first author Fabian Kneier in the session “Climate Services – Underpinning Science”.

18,155 scientists from 136 countries virtually attended the vEGU21, which provided 13,643 live presentations in 642 scientific sessions, 5 Union Symposia, 32 Medal and Award Lectures, 5 Great Debates and 56 Short Courses. We also want to share our perceptions about vEGU21, even if they can only be subjective due to the impossibility of visiting all events. Without having numbers, water-related topics in general seem to be growing as a topic of interest, also in other EGU divisions than the hydrological division. Furthermore, interdisciplinary sessions seem to be gaining in importance. While ten years ago sessions with a water-food-energy-ecosystem nexus were almost not represented, this topic has strongly increased its influence in the last years. In general, there seems to be an increase in applied sciences towards societally-relevant topics, even in sessions where basic research traditionally used to be very dominant. Short Courses and debates are also on the increase. There seems to be a declining interest in climate change impacts on hydrology. While the topic is still very well represented in numerous sessions, there seems to be an increasing interest in topically broader, socio-hydrology sessions.