Droughts severely impact societies and ecosystems around the world. So far most drought research has focused on natural processes in pristine catchments. In the current era, termed the Anthropocene, the human aspect can no longer be neglected. One major challenge is the quantification of impacts of droughts on society, i.e. finding the inter-relationships between physical drought characteristics and wildfires, crop yields, electricity production, navigation, etc. The feedback process, i.e. the direct influence of society on droughts, is even more a white space on the map. In many regions, humans might be regarded as additional driver of a drought hazard, for example through massive groundwater abstraction for irrigation or reduced recharge as a result of extensive urbanisation. Due to complex feedbacks between drought, hydrology and society, the effects of human influence and climate cannot simply be added. Thus, a major scientific challenge lies in finding how these interactions drive long-term dynamics and contribute to future hydrological changes, which is one of the goal of the IAHS scientific decade Panta Rhei.
This session welcomes abstracts about the human aspects of drought at various scales (from local to global scale and from short term to long term), including impacts of drought on society and influence of society on drought. The session focuses on process understanding and prediction.

We invite papers on:
- drought research in catchments with some influence of humans on the hydrology,
- opinions about how to move drought research to the non-natural regions of the world,
- impacts of drought on natural and human systems,
- modelling feedbacks between drought and society,
- investigating changes in water availability over time in relation to both natural and anthropogenic drivers,
- innovative ideas and methods on droughts in the Anthropocene.

This session is linked to Panta Rhei and hopes to stimulate scientific discussion about how to include anthropogenic influences and impacts in drought research.