Surface Water Responses to Drought: From River Basins to Lakes and Reservoirs

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue addresses the critical role of drought in driving surface water depletion across diverse hydroclimatic regions worldwide. Surface water resources, including snowpacks, glaciers, river systems, wetlands, reservoirs, and lakes, form essential components of the hydrological cycle and underpin ecosystem health, socio-economic development, and water security. Although groundwater is hydraulically connected to surface water systems and serves as a vital resource in many arid and semi-arid regions, surface waters typically respond more rapidly and visibly to drought, climate variability, land-use change, and anthropogenic pressures.

The pronounced vulnerability of surface water systems to drought, climate change, and pollution highlights the urgent need for advanced monitoring, modeling, and forecasting frameworks capable of supporting adaptive management and resilience planning. Progress in this area directly contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), and SDG 13 (Climate Action), by promoting sustainable water management and climate-resilient infrastructure.

This Special Issue offers a multidisciplinary platform for advancing the scientific understanding of surface water behavior under drought stress and its interaction with atmospheric and environmental drivers. Contributions are invited on theoretical and applied studies, including data-driven and process-based modeling, machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches, remote sensing and GIS analyses, the development of drought indices, the assessment of large-scale atmospheric–oceanic oscillations and teleconnections, and short- to long-term forecasting methods. Together, we aim for these studies to support evidence-based decision-making and sustainable water resource management in a changing climate.

Dr. Babak Vaheddoost
Dr. Mir Jafar Sadegh Safari
Guest Editors

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