The 20th Annual Meeting of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS2023) was held from 30 July to 4 August at the Suntec Convention Centre in Singapore.  Professor Jun Niu of convened and chaired two sessions on hydrological sciences, namely, HS08, Drought Characterizing and Modelling Hydroclimatological Processes in a Changing Environment, and HS21, Water-carbon Cycles in Agricultural Lands Under Changing Climate. A total of 12 oral presentations and 15 posters were presented. More than 100 experts and scholars from home and abroad participated in the sessions, including experts and scholars from University of New South Wales, Bureau of Meteorology, Australia; Tohoku University, Japan; Hanyang University, Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources, Pusan National University, Sejong University, Korea; Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali, Maharaja Sriram Chandra Bhanja Deo University, Odisha Space Application Centre, Ravenshaw University, India; Institute of Technology of Cambodia, Cambodia; Caraga State University, Philippines; Tsinghua University, Sun Yat-sen University, National Central University, University of Electronic Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an University of Technology, Anhui Normal University, etc. Experts and scholars from these universities and research institutes discussed with the authors about the scientific issues in the oral presentations and posters.

Five teachers and five postgraduate students from our center actively participated in the presentations and academic exchanges at the venue. Professor Mao Xiaomin reported the current progress and challenges in modelling soil water, heat and salt dynamics and their interactions with crop growth in the dry zone of northwestern China as an example, Professor Jun Niu reported a crop spatial optimization planting pattern to maximize crop water productivity, economic water productivity and nutrient water productivity, Professor Sufen Wang, Associate Professor Xinmei Hao and Associate Professor Fei Tian gave poster presentations and exchanged views on the optimal crop spatial pattern arrangement method to enhance agricultural productivity and irrigation efficiency, the inversion method of soil hydraulic parameters based on the HYDRUS-2D model, and the spatial-temporal dynamics of water-use efficiency of cropland ecosystems in the Shiyang River Basin and its response, respectively. Postgraduate student Dehai Liao reported and explained the benefits of agricultural irrigation on the gross primary productivity of maize in China, and postgraduate student Xueyi Yang reported on the response of evapotranspiration to climate change and human activities in the Shiyang River Basin. Postgraduate students Yunfei Fan, Dehai Liao, Wenting Wei and Wenjing Mao gave poster presentations and exchanges on the optimal cropping pattern to promote sustainable irrigation, surface soil water assimilation methods to enhance deep soil moisture estimation, multi-scale regional climate-vegetation-evapotranspiration-runoff relationships based on Wavelet-Budyko coupled model, and multi-scale drought propagation in the Yellow River Basin and its impact on grain yield, respectively.

In addition to our Centre’s faculty and students, the sessions hosted by Professor Jun Niu also attracted many scholars from home and abroad. In HS08 session, Professor Fubo Zhao from Xi’an Jiaotong University reported how climate and vegetation changes affect water supply and ecosystem conditions in the Yellow River Basin. Nichole Anthony Pacle, a research scholar from Caraga State University in the Philippines, presented the impact of land use change on water quality and sediment transport in watersheds. Professor Xi Wang from Xi’an Jiaotong University explains the increased sensitivity of vegetation to soil moisture and its key mechanisms on the Loess Plateau of China. Research scholars from the University of New South Wales, Australia, report on the hierarchy of drought forecasting in Australia. Professor Shulei Zhang from Sun Yat-sen University reported on the global drought propagation model under future warming conditions. Hyeok Kim and Hyun-Han Kwon, researchers from Hanyang University and Sejong University in Korea evaluated the hydrological risk of drought in the Nakdong Basin using a classifier-based composite drought index. And researchers from Ravenshaw University in India reported on extreme drought events susceptible to groundwater recharge zonation, using western Odisha, India, as an example. In the HS21 session, Professor Songhao Shang from Tsinghua University presented a methodology for crop water productivity assessment in large irrigation districts based on remote sensing technology, as an invited speaker. Dr. Guangchuang Zhang from Xi’an Jiaotong University assessed the variations in water retention in an inner river headwater basin in the 21st century as well as early warning of risks under climate change.

This international academic conference provided an excellent platform for teachers and students of the Centre to have in-depth exchanges with their counterparts at home and abroad, increased academic knowledge, broadened academic horizons, strengthened international exchanges and cooperation, and played an important role in promoting the research on water issues in China and around the world.