Hydrating the Hydrocracy: In Search of Collaborative Offshoots

A remarkable development occurred in the water community during the autumn of 2022. For the very first time, the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the ex-cathedra authority of Earth-system interactions, decided to revise its classical diagram of the water cycle to explicitly include human activities such as urban runoff, agricultural water use, reservoir storage, and others. This was more than a move towards a more accurate representation; it was also a marker of the way the wind had been blowing. Generations had grown up learning that this cycle was a ‘natural’ and a ‘neutral’ scientific concept, originally formulated by the American hydrologist Robert Horton in 1931. However, this change also brought to the forefront the deeply political and socially constructed nature of the water cycle and the field of hydrology.