A Systematic Review of Spatial-Temporal Scale Issues in Sociohydrology

Abstract

Sociohydrology is a recent effort to integrate coupled human-water systems to understand the dynamics and co-evolution of the system in a holistic sense. However, due to the complexity and uncertainty involved in coupled human-water systems, the feedbacks and interactions are inherently difficult to model. Part of this complexity is due to the multi-scale nature across space and time at which different hydrologic and social processes occur and the varying scale at which data is available. This systematic review seeks to comprehensively collect those documents that conduct analysis within the sociohydrology framework to quantify the spatial-temporal scale(s) and the types of variables and datasets that were used. Overall, a majority of sociohydrology studies reviewed were primarily published in hydrological journals and contain more established hydrological, rather than social, models. The spatial extents varied by political and natural boundaries with the most common being cities and watersheds. Temporal extents also varied from event-based to millennial timescales where decadal and yearly were the most common. In addition to this, current limitations of sociohydrology research, notably the absence of an interdisciplinary unity, future directions, and implications for scholars doing sociohydrology are discussed.