Strategic plan for the future

At the EURO-FRIEND Project 3 workshop in Birmingham, November 2007, the group’s progress to date and future trajectory of research was discussed in detail. The group intends to continue research under the five themes outlined above. A new theme was proposed aimed at assessing the impacts/ implications of hydroclimatological variability on/ for river ecology, erosion, sediment transport, fluvial geomorphology, and slope stability. Issues of data availability and archiving were discussed at length, particularly regarding the updating of the FRIEND-European Water Archive, and the availability of data from specific geographical regions and countries. A position paper has been compiled for Hydrological Processes on river flow archives for large-scale hydrological analysis (Hannah; Demuth; van Lanen; Looser; Prudhomme; Rees; Stahl; Tallaksen).

In addition, to continuing work on specific projects in smaller, defined research clusters, Euro-FRIEND Project 3 will seek:

• to promote and encourage research expertise within Europe related to the research themes identified
• to sustain and expand links with other FRIEND projects/ programmes and international groups working on allied themes
• to encourage new, especially younger, scientists to join the group
• to identify mechanisms by which the group can work together in a tangible manner to research advance (e.g. project proposals, student exchanges and joint training/ teaching)

EURO-FRIEND Project 3 will seek to engage with the wider hydrological community by seeking collaboration on the following topics: environmental impacts due to changes in climate, land-use or human activity; analysis of water use; and inter-comparison of different large-scale hydrological modelling approaches and integration of modelling and empirical studies. External associations are being explored with the wider earth science community (e.g. with GEWEX-HEPEX by Prudhomme).

© 2016 EURO-FRIEND

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