On March 24, 2026 Spring International Workshop on IAHS-HELPING-DEEPHY was held in Beijing. Twenty-six participants, including Professor WANG Yi, Professor Grace Margaret Carswell and Lecture Charlotte Alicia Pearson from the University of Sussex, United Kingdom, Professor LIU Suxia, Prof. YANG Lihu and Engineer LIU Enmin from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, attended the meeting. The workshop was chaired by Professor Suxia Liu.

After the opening remarks, Professor LIU outlined the rationale for initiating IAHS-HELPING-DEEPHY. Professor WANG displayed concurrent floods and droughts in the catchment of Jinghe River (Xi’an, China). Ph.D. student Jean Marie Vianney Nsigayehe delivered the research advances on the integrated assessment of land suitability, yield gaps, climate change, and socio-economics factors for taro production in Rwanda. Other hot issues, such as the types of hydrological changes, the response of hydrological systems to the annual and monthly climate change scenario, and the sampling of questionnaire were deeply discussed by the participants. After the discussions, delegates visited the Five-water-Transform Laboratory.

Since 2003, the IAHS has launched two successive International Hydrological Decades, namely PUB (2003-2012) and Panta Rhei (2013-2022). The new International Hydrological Decade (IHD) HELPING will focus on finding practical solutions to the global water crisis over the decade from 2023 to 2032, with a number of special working groups initialized. Among them, the DEEPHY Working Group was proposed and led by Professor LIU Suxia. It is committed, to deeply explore the explanatory factors of hydrological changes, evaluate the impact of hydrological changes, and find strategies to thoroughly solve local water problems. Currently DEEPHY has nearly 100 members from more than 20 countries.

More details, please see https://iahs.info/Initiatives/Scientific-Decades/helping-working-groups/deep-explanation--evaluation-for-practices-in-hydrological-changes-deephy/.

The Department of Geography of the University of Sussex and the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences has maintained a long-term friendly and cooperative relation. This visit to Beijing will bring more opportunities between the two sides.

Prof. LIU Suxia speaks her presentation