News & Events

Founding father of our Commission awarded prestigious ScD degree by Cambridge University

Prof. emeritus Dr. JAA Jones, who established the IGU Study Group on Hydrological Extreme Events that ultimately developed into the Commission for Water Sustainability, was recently awarded the prestigious ScD (Doctor of Science)-degree by the renowned University of Cambridge, where he obtained his PhD in 1976 with a nearly 500-page thesis on “Soil piping and the subsurface initiation of stream channel networks“.

Prof. Jones conducted much of his early field research in the hydrological research area of the Maesnant catchment in the Cambrian Mountains of mid-Wales, UK, which is now included in the collection of the British Hydrological Society’s website on the History of Hydrology (http://www.history-of-hydrology.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=Maesnant_(Wales)_1970s-1990s). It was in this study area where Tony pioneered the research into soil piping as a newly discovered form of subsurface run-off generation.

In contrast to a PhD, which is commonly awarded at the start of an academic career following a thesis with original research on a limited field, the lesser known ScD requires, at least in the UK, additionally a significant body of impactful scientific publications that expand the knowledge of the discipline. In 2006, the IAHS listed his pioneering work on natural soil piping among the Benchmark Papers on Streamflow Generation Processes, one of just 29 since the work of R.E. Horton that founded modern scientific hydrology in the 1930s. As well as a substantial number of peer-reviewed articles in international journals covering both hydrological processes and the impacts of climate change on river regimes and water resources, Tony is the author and editor of several international textbooks on hydrology and other seminal books on water-related topics, including the latest one on Water Sustainability, Prof. Jones certainly meets these criteria like few others in the field.

On behalf of the Commission I congratulate Prof. Jones on this achievement and look forward to his continued future contributions to our Commission and to geographical water research at large and wish him well.

Frank Winde, Chair Commission of Water Sustainability