Günter Blöschl
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President of the European Geosciences Union
April 2013 – April 2015 -
Vice-President of the European Geosciences Union
April 2015 – April 2016; April 2012 – April 2013 -
President of the Division "Hydrological Sciences" (HS) of the European Geosciences Union
April 2002 – April 2007
Günter Blöschl received a Diploma in civil engineering in 1985 and his PhD in hydrology in 1990 from the Vienna University of Technology. After appointments as a research fellow in Vancouver, Canberra and Melbourne he obtained his Venia Legendi in hydrology in 1997. In 2007 he was appointed Chair of Hydrology and Water Resources Management at the Vienna University of Technology.
Günter Blöschl’s principal research interests are understanding and predicting hydrological processes across scales. He is operating the Hydrological Open Air Laboratory (HOAL) that aims at understanding flow and transport processes with high temporal and spatial detail. He is interested in distributed hydrological modelling using remotely sensed snow and soil moisture data, scale issues, regional process hydrology, climate change impacts, environmental change, socio-hydrology, predictions of floods and droughts, and flood risk estimation.
His research work has been supported by grants from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), the Australian Research Council (ARC), the European Commission, state and federal agencies as well as selected industries. The fruits of that research (about 300 articles and over 6000 citations) have been recognised by his receipt of numerous honours including the IAHS/UNESCO/WMO Hydrological Sciences Award, election as a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), Member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech) and Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). Recently he was awarded the Advanced Grant of the European Research Council (ERC) on River Flood Changes().
Günter Blöschl is currently Editor of Hydrology and Earth Systems Sciences (HESS) and Water Resources Research (WRR), and Editorial Board member of five other leading journals. He chairs the Scientific Advisory Council of the German Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG) and sits on the steering committee of the NFP61 of the Swiss National Science Foundation. He has been the chair of the Predictions in Ungauged Basins (PUB) initiative of the International Association Hydrological Sciences whose Synthesis book() he has edited.
Günter Blöschl has participated in teaching at all University levels. He has mentored three generations of students over the past 20 years. He is the founder and Director of the Vienna Doctoral Programme on Water Resource Systems(), a multi-year inter-disciplinary PhD program at the Vienna University of Technology funded by the Austrian Science Fund that focuses on connecting biogeochemical and ecological processes impacting on water quality.
Throughout his career, Günter Blöschl has been a strong advocate of bridging the gap between fundamental process understanding and the practice of water resources management.