The future of hydrology: An evolving science for a changing world

Human activities exert global‐scale impacts on our environment with significant implications for freshwater‐driven services and hazards for humans and nature. Our approach to the science of hydrology needs to significantly change so that we can understand and predict these implications. Such an adjustment is a necessary prerequisite for the development of sustainable water resource management strategies and to achieve long‐term water security for people and the environment. Hydrology requires a paradigm shift in which predictions of system behavior that are beyond the range of previously observed variability or that result from significant alterations of physical (structural) system characteristics become the…