Innovative Approaches to Hydrological Challenges in Data-Scarce Basins

Dear Colleagues,

Effective water resources management depends, above all, on the availability of reliable hydrological information. Yet, in many parts of the world—particularly across emerging economies, arid and semi‑arid regions and mountainous or otherwise complex terrains—hydrometeorological monitoring networks remain sparse, fragmented or intermittent. These data limitations make it difficult to calibrate and validate models, assess hydrological variability with confidence and design sound water‑management strategies. As a result, the ability of societies to strengthen resilience and pursue sustainable development is often constrained by the simple lack of baseline information.

The Special Issue “Innovative Approaches to Hydrological Challenges in Data‑Scarce Basins” aims to gather high‑quality contributions that offer creative, technically solid solutions to this longstanding challenge. We invite submissions that present and apply novel methods capable of improving hydrological understanding and decision‑making in contexts where data are limited, uncertain or unevenly distributed. Relevant topics include, but are not restricted to, physically based or conceptual modeling frameworks adapted to sparse datasets; advanced regionalization and parameter‑transfer techniques; innovative uses of remote sensing products, citizen‑generated or crowd‑sourced observations and spatial or geostatistical tools to enrich hydrological datasets as well as methodological advances in uncertainty analysis, uncertainty communication and uncertainty reduction.

We welcome original research articles reporting case studies from a wide range of climatic and physiographic environments as well as review papers that synthesize best practices or highlight emerging directions for research and application. Through this Special Issue, our goal is to advance the science of hydrological inference under data scarcity and to provide engineers, practitioners and policymakers with scientifically robust tools to support sustainable water governance in basins where traditional data‑rich approaches are not feasible.

Dr. Maritza Arganis-Juarez
Prof. Dr. Wei Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Environments is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• hydrology in data-scarce basins
• hydrological modeling and prediction
• regionalization techniques
• remote sensing for hydrology
• uncertainty analysis
• streamflow and precipitation estimation
• water resource management
• resilience planning
• hydrological monitoring strategies
• sustainable water governance