MESSAGE FROM HUBERT SAVENIJE, IAHS PRESIDENT

This is my first message as your new President. The first thing I would like to do is express my gratitude and appreciation for everything Gordon Young has done for our association and for his personal support in preparing me for a smooth transition. I want to mention particularly Gordon's dedication to Panta Rhei and all the support he has given to Alberto Montanari to pull Panta Rhei off the ground. I hope to be a worthy successor to Gordon and hope that I can continue to rely on his help as past-President in the many complex dossiers that IAHS is involved in globally.

We had a very successful Assembly in Gothenburg with five Red Books produced and very active symposia and workshops. An important event during the meeting was the actual launch of Panta Rhei, under the leadership of Alberto Montanari. Already Panta Rhei is establishing itself as a major global agenda-setting initiative, with many activities planned in upcoming IAHS, AGU and EGU symposia and conferences. We wish Alberto and his team lots of success and we count on your active participation in this important global research initiative.

During the IAHS plenary session in Gothenburg, we celebrated the awarding of the 2013 International Hydrology Prize to Prof. Guenter Bloeschl for his pioneering work on linking patterns and processes in catchment hydrology and for his inspirational leadership in advancing Predictions in Ungauged Basins, and the presentation of the Tison Award to Frederico Lombardo and Elena Volpi for their paper on ' Rainfall downscaling in time: theoretical and empirical comparison between multifractal and Hurst-Kolmogorov discrete random cascades ' in Hydrological Sciences Journal.

This newsletter contains a range of interesting news items and I would like to highlight two of them. Firstly, I am happy to announce that from 2014 onwards we shall have two medals that we award jointly with WMO and UNESCO under the International Hydrology Prize: the Dooge and the Volker medals. The first medal is aimed to honour outstanding scientists who have made fundamental contributions to hydrological sciences, whereas the Volker medal is aimed at outstanding contributions in applied hydrology. Details on these medals are provided elsewhere, but here I want to stress that we invite nominations (to be submitted to the Secretary General by National Representatives) for both medals before 31 December. Volker and Dooge were pioneers of modern hydrology, both were Presidents of IAHS, and both won the International Hydrology Prize (in 1983 and 1984). Please have a look at International Hydrology Prize winners, where you can find short descriptions of their careers and achievements.

Secondly, it is worth mentioning that the Bureau decided to hold the next IAHS assembly in 2017 in South Africa. We gladly accepted the generous proposal by South Africa to host our symposium in Durban or Capetown (to be decided later). South Africa is a country with a very interesting hydrology and substantial water resources challenges, which I am sure we are all eager to learn more about. Also we hope that having our symposium in Africa will lead to a strong participation by scientists from the region. Personally I very much look forward to it and I count on an active participation by all of you.

Hubert Savenije