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Hyphenated hydrology: Interdisciplinary evolution of water resource science
Author(s) -
McCurley Kathryn L.,
Jawitz James W.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1002/2016wr019835
Subject(s) - viewpoints , resource (disambiguation) , hydrology (agriculture) , context (archaeology) , water resources , conversation , discipline , narrative , environmental science , geography , environmental resource management , sociology , computer science , geology , social science , ecology , archaeology , art , computer network , linguistics , philosophy , geotechnical engineering , communication , visual arts , biology
Hydrology has advanced considerably as a scientific discipline since its recognized inception in the mid‐twentieth century. Modern water resource related questions have forced adaptation from exclusively physical or engineering science viewpoints toward a deliberate interdisciplinary context. Over the past few decades, many of the eventual manifestations of this evolution were foreseen by prominent expert hydrologists. However, their narrative descriptions have lacked substantial quantification. This study addressed that gap by measuring the prevalence of and analyzing the relationships between the terms most frequently used by hydrologists to define and describe their research. We analyzed 16,591 journal article titles from 1965–2015 in Water Resources Research , through which the scientific dialogue and its time‐sensitive progression emerged. Our word frequency and term cooccurrence network results revealed the dynamic timing of the lateral movement of hydrology across multiple disciplines as well as the deepening of scientific discourse with respect to traditional hydrologic questions. The conversation among water resource scientists surrounding the hydrologic subdisciplines of catchment‐hydrology, hydro‐meteorology, socio‐hydrology, hydro‐climatology, and eco‐hydrology gained statistically significant momentum in the analyzed time period, while that of hydro‐geology and contaminant‐hydrology experienced periods of increase followed by significant decline. This study concludes that formerly exotic disciplines can potentially modify hydrology, prompting new insights and inspiring unconventional perspectives on old questions that may have otherwise become obsolete.