The aim of this paper is to communicate results of our survey giving a first overview and reflects how teaching of hydrology and water-related sciences changed due to COVID-19. Next to many negative aspects for teachers and students, a spirit of optimism, time of change and community initiatives could also be noticed. COVID-19 made it possible to explore novel teaching methods useful for modernizing education and making practical teaching formats accessible to all hydrology and water students.

Recharge assessment in the shared transboundary Western Aquifer Basin is highly relevant, scientifically as well as hydropolitically (in Israeli–Palestinian water negotiations). Our unique combination of field-measured soil characteristics and soil moisture time series with soil moisture saturation excess modelling provides a new basis for the spatial differentiation of formation-specific groundwater recharge (at any scale), applicable also in other previously ungauged basins around the world.

In the context of hydraulic fracturing we constructed a comprehensive FEP database and applied it to six key focused scenarios defined under the scope of FracRisk project (www.fracrisk.eu). The FEP database is ranked to show the relevance of each item in the FEP list per scenario. The main goal of the work is to illustrate the FEP database applicability to develop a conceptual model for regional-scale stray gas migration.

In this case study, we compute georeservoir specific capillary pressure-saturation- interfacial area relationships by implementing a FEM-based two-phase flow model on μ-CT-based modelling domains. We propose a recommended practice for deriving a model and model setup for the successful modelling of such types of problems on micro-CT obtained geometries.

Soil moisture was observed along a strong semi-arid climatic gradient in a Mediterranean karst area. Soil moisture data and soil hydraulic modelling with Hydrus-1D revealed a strong dependency of percolation fluxes with rainfall amounts and intensity during heavy rainfall events. Spatial and temporal extrapolation of the model illustrated the high variability of seasonal percolation amounts among single years and showed strong correlations between soil depth and potential groundwater recharge.