What makes the Indo-Gangetic Basin one of the most important aquifers in the world? How do stable isotopes, CFCs, and even traces of pharmaceuticals help us understand where groundwater comes from and how old it is? Can satellites like GRACE and InSAR give us new insights into groundwater depletion and recharge in South Asia?

Alan M. MacDonald, Head of Groundwater at the British Geological Survey, joins host Veena Srinivasan on Season 2, Episode 6 of the Water Data Podcast.

Alan is a hydrogeologist with over 30 years of research experience in Africa and South Asia, and has published widely on groundwater, climate change, and aquifer systems

In this episode, Alan and Veena dive deep into the Indo-Gangetic Basin, exploring how its young sediments and complex geology shape groundwater availability, why salinity and depletion can exist side by side, and how historical canal records still influence water levels today.

Alan explains how tracer studies and isotope hydrology reveal the origins of groundwater, and how modern tools like satellites are transforming our understanding of recharge, depletion, and salinity.

The Water Data Podcast is a talk show on the science, systems, and stories of water hosted by Veena Srinivasan.

For all references and further readings related to the episode, visit https://welllabs.org/wdp-alanmacdonald/

Subscribe to The Water Data Podcast on your favourite podcast app – and catch video episodes on the WELL Labs YouTube channel @welllabs.

Subscription links: Youtube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, Castbox, and wherever you get your podcasts!

Recording by Nabina Chakraborty and Nanditha Gogate. Video editing by Vraj Acharya. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.

Professor Murugesu Sivapalan shares how the field of hydrology has evolved over the past few decades, on Season 2, Episode 5 of the Water Data Podcast.

Prof Murugesu Sivapalan is the Chester and Helen Siess Endowed Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr Sivapalan is an award-winning academic and was founding chair of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) Decade on Predictions in Ungauged Basins (PUB) initiative. His work on Predictions in Ungauged Basins as well as in socio-hydrology have shaped the discipline of hydrology as we know it today.

Host Veena Srinivasan talks to Dr Sivapalan about his rich career of starting out with hydrological modeling, and early explorations into collecting and analysing hydrological data to infer how complex catchment and river basin systems functioned.

Hydrology is the science of the movement, distribution and management of water. Dr Sivapalan walks us through how the ‘Predictions in Ungauged Basins’ decade pushed people to better understand the physical processes around the hydrological cycle, beyond statistical analyses and calibrated models. He shares how catchments co-evolved with the biology they sustained, and how they shaped each other.

Dr Sivapalan goes on to talk about socio-hydrology, and how human activities also shape river basins and water systems, and vice versa. He explores how it is impossible to understand water systems today without paying close attention to human behaviour and human actions.

The Water Data Podcast is a talk show on the science, systems, and stories of water hosted by Veena Srinivasan.

For all references and further readings related to the episode, visit https://welllabs.org/wdp-sivapalan/

Subscribe to The Water Data Podcast on your favourite podcast app - and catch video episodes on the WELL Labs YouTube channel @welllabs.

Subscription links: Youtube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, Castbox, and wherever you get your podcasts!

Recording by Nabina Chakraborty. Video editing by Nabina Chakraborty. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.

Host Veena Srinivasan sits down with Dr. Tom Gleeson, renowned hydrologist and Professor at the University of Victoria, Canada.

Dr. Tom Gleeson shares his journey from a small-town experience with groundwater contamination to becoming a global leader in groundwater research. The conversation explores Tom’s early fieldwork in fractured rock aquifers, the challenges of modeling groundwater systems, and his pivotal role in developing global groundwater sustainability frameworks. Tom and Veena discuss the importance of context in water management and the need for both local and global perspectives.

This is Season 2, Episode 4 of the Water Data Podcast, a talk show on the science, systems, and stories of water hosted by Veena Srinivasan. Veena Srinivasan is an award-winning socio-hydrologist as well as the founder and Executive Director of WELL Labs, a water systems research and innovation centre based in Bengaluru, India.

Dr Gleeson also delves into his recent work on community-based watershed monitoring and the power of citizen science, highlighting innovative projects that blend science, policy, and indigenous data governance. The episode concludes with a thought-provoking discussion on integrating art and emotion into science communication, emphasising that real change comes from engaging both the mind and the heart.

Subscribe to the Water Data Podcast for more conversations at the intersection of data, science, and society!

For all references and further readings related to the episode, visit https://welllabs.org/wdp-gleeson/

Subscribe to The Water Data Podcast on your favourite podcast app - and catch video episodes on the WELL Labs YouTube channel @welllabs.

Subscription links: Youtube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Castbox, and wherever you get your podcasts!

Recording by Nabina Chakraborty. Video editing by Nabina Chakraborty. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.

How and why does flooding take place? How are flood risks evolving with climate change and large-scale human alteration of riverscapes and watersheds? Does it even make sense to measure a ‘100-year-flood’ any more?

Stockholm Water Prize 2025 winner Dr Guenter Bloeschl shares a masterclass on the science and management of floods on the third episode of Season 2 of the Water Data Podcast. The Water Data Podcast is a talk show on the science, systems, and stories of water hosted by Veena Srinivasan.

Professor Guenter Bloeschl is a hydrologist, engineer and academic from Austria. Dr Bloeschl is Head of the Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management, Director of the Centre for Water Resource Systems of the Vienna University of Technology as well as Chair of the Vienna Doctoral Programme on Water Resource Systems.

He is also the 2025 recipient of the Stockholm Water Prize, awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Stockholm Water Foundation. One of the highest honours in the water sciences, Dr Bloeschl received it for his extensive work on flood risk reduction, water resource management, flood scaling, and regional process hydrology.

In this episode, Dr Bloeschl talks about the science of flooding, what research shows about the evolving causes and impacts of floods in Europe, and flood mitigation and management lessons for India and the world.

For all references and further readings related to the episode, visit https://welllabs.org/wdp-bloeschl

Subscribe to The Water Data Podcast on your favourite podcast app - and catch video episodes on the WELL Labs YouTube channel @welllabs.

Subscription links: Youtube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, Castbox, and wherever you get your podcasts!

Recording by Nabina Chakraborty. Video editing by Vraj Acharya. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.

Do farmers share and sell groundwater to each other informally? Can you price water for farmers? How does new technology get adopted in agriculture? Does solar irrigation make sense for India?

Dr Soumya Balasubramanya has a wide-ranging discussion with host Veena Srinivasan on the second episode of Season 2 of the Water Data Podcast.

Dr Soumya Balasubramanya is a senior economist with the World Bank, and previously a Senior Researcher in Environment and Development Economics at the International Water Management Institute-CGIAR. Soumya has worked extensively on analysing informal groundwater markets in South Asia, on irrigation and solar-powered irrigation, on pricing, and on evaluating water quality interventions in Arsenic-polluted waters.

This episode is co-hosted by Pavan Srinath, Managing Partner at WELL Labs.

For all references and further readings related to the episode, visit https://bit.ly/waterdatapod-sbala

Subscribe to The Water Data Podcast on your favourite podcast app - and catch video episodes on the WELL Labs YouTube channel @welllabs.

Subscription links: Youtube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, Castbox, and wherever you get your podcasts!

Recording by Pavan Srinath. Video editing by Nabina Chakraborty. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.

How do you develop a water policy for a state like Karnataka, and how do you implement it well? How can you bring the best of science, engineering and citizen engagement to water management in government? What does it mean to build a think tank within the government?

Dr Somasekhar Rao has a wide-ranging discussion with host Veena Srinivasan on the first episode of Season 2 of the Water Data Podcast.

Dr Somasekhar Rao is Director (Technical) of the Advanced Centre for Integrated Water Resources Management (ACIWRM), Government of Karnataka and helped the state government start the institution in 2015. Working with the Netherlands government and later with the Food and Agriculture Organisation, Dr Rao created and ran large-scale groundwater management programmes in Andhra Pradesh: APWELL and APFAGMS. He has also worked with the Asian Development Bank, and has spent the last 15 years modernising and reforming water management in Karnataka and mainstreaming river basin management and integrated water resources management in the state. He also helped the government bring in a new Karnataka State Water Policy 2022. The episode features an expansive conversation exploring all this and more.

For all references and further readings related to the episode, visit https://bit.ly/waterdatapod-psrao

Subscribe to The Water Data Podcast on your favourite podcast app - and catch video episodes on the WELL Labs YouTube channel @welllabs.

Subscription links: Youtube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Castbox, and wherever you get your podcasts!

Recording by Vraj Acharya, Ritik Pathak and Nabina Chakraborty. Video editing by Vraj Acharya and Nabina Chakraborty. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.

The Water Data Podcast is a talk show on the science, systems, and stories of water hosted by Veena Srinivasan. Every other Tuesday, sit down and listen to researchers, innovators, government officials and business leaders working on the forefront of water systems.

New episodes out from June 22, 2025!

Veena Srinivasan is an award-winning socio-hydrologist as well as the founder and Executive Director of WELL Labs, a water systems research and innovation centre based in Bengaluru, India.

The Water Data Podcast features discussions on what data and research tell us about water systems, about how climate change is affecting them and how human use of water is transforming the stock and flow of water across diverse landscapes and aquifers. The show focuses on how we can collectively manage water systems better.

Subscribe to The Water Data Podcast on your favourite podcast app - and catch video episodes on the WELL Labs YouTube channel @welllabs.

Recording by Vraj Acharya, Nanditha Gogate and Nabina Chakraborty. Video editing by Vraj Acharya. Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar. Audio mixing and mastering by Vijay Doiphode. Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath.

The episode focuses on the role and use of data for corporate water stewardship. Our guests Hari Hegde from Wipro Limited and Jason Morisson from the CEO Water Mandate and the Pacific Institute join us to talk about business action, how businesses can become water efficient and how data ties into these questions. They walk us through their journey with corporate water stewardship.

The Water Data Podcast is a talk show on the science, systems, and stories of water hosted by Veena Srinivasan. Every other Tuesday, sit down and listen to researchers, innovators, government officials and business leaders working on the forefront of water systems.

This episode was originally uploaded in 2021, and is hosted by Nirat Bhatnagar, Partner at Dalberg, and Veena Srinivasan. The episode has been re-uploaded in 2025.