Young Hydrologic Society (YHS): vision, mission, and strategy

Abstract

The Young Hydrologic Society (YHS) is a grassroots initiative to stimulate the interaction and active participation of early career hydrologists within the hydrological sciences community and beyond. Our vision is to reform hydrologic community towards a more active and inclusive involvement of early career hydrologists. YHS mission is to connect and inform. With YHS, we want to (1) connect early career scientists (ECS) by regularly organizing scientific and professional development sessions/workshops, as well as social events at geoscience conferences e.g. EGU, AGU, and IAHS; (2) inform YHS members about successes/issues of the hydrologic community and the current and future research topics of the field. Social media, such as Twitter, blogs or Facebook have been instrumental for YHS to reach its goals. But we noticed that, even in the era of online communication, face-to-face contact remains to be the most effective way to foster connections globally and raise awareness about our network. Actively participating in workshops, seminars, and roundtable discussions at international conferences requires more resources, but the memories are longer lasting and can be even more meaningful/inspiring than what online posts provides. YHS takes pride in its strategy to diversify and empower National Initiatives (e.g. Canadian YHS) as well as actively collaborate with other ECS networks such as Student Subcommittee of AGU Hydrology Section (H3S), Young Earth System Scientists (YESS) community, and IAHS Early Career Committee. We recommend that diversifying ECS networks, engaging ECS in convening scientific sessions, in addition to expanding ECS-focused workshops/events should be an inalienable component of geoscience conferences.