Early Career scientists make up a significant amount of our community, creating an opportunity to include a new generation of hydrologists as active contributors to IAHS. Early Career scientist involvement in geoscientific organizations has rapidly increased over recent years. Organizations such as the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the European Geosciences Union (EGU) have adopted Early Career representation in committees, board and executive committees.
During its Bureau Meeting in July 2017 (held in Port Elizabeth, South Africa following the IAHS Scientific Assembly 2017), IAHS decided to strengthen its Early Career scientist representation to enable more active participation of those members within IAHS Commissions and Working Groups. To achieve this goal, in line with the proposal submitted by Tim van Emmerik and Nilay Dogulu—and approved by the Bureau members—IAHS will establish an Early Career Committee (ECC) consisting of the Early Career Representative of each IAHS Commission plus a chair and co-chair. The IAHS definition of Early Career embraces scientists up to 5 years after completion of the PhD (allowing for an extra year per child for parents if they took parental leave).
IAHS Early Career Committee (ECC) structure
The ECC is aimed at representing the Early Career membership of the IAHS at the highest level, and within each Commission. ECC members are dedicated to fostering dialogue between Early Career members, and between current and future generations of hydrologists. The ECC chair will be appointed by the IAHS Bureau and will join the IAHS Bureau meetings as an observer. The chair will be encouraged to also be an active member of the Young Hydrologic Society to assure strong connections with other Early Career initiatives in the hydrological community.
In December 2017, Patricia Gonzalez and her colleagues published a paper on a novel water demand system dynamics model that integrates social and structural drivers of water conservation in WRR. We asked her a couple of questions.