The new Scientific Decade 2013–2022 of IAHS, entitled “Panta Rhei—Everything Flows”, is dedicated to research activities on change in hydrology and society. The purpose of Panta Rhei is to reach an improved interpretation of the processes governing the water cycle by focusing on their changing dynamics in connection with rapidly changing human systems. The practical aim is to improve our capability to make predictions of water resources dynamics to support sustainable societal development in a changing environment. The concept implies a focus on hydrological systems as a changing interface between environment and society, whose dynamics are essential to determine water security, human safety and development, and to set priorities for environmental management. The Scientific Decade 2013–2022 will devise innovative theoretical blueprints for the representation of processes including change and will focus on advanced monitoring and data analysis techniques. Interdisciplinarity will be sought by increased efforts to connect with the socio-economic sciences and geosciences in general. This paper presents a summary of the Science Plan of Panta Rhei, its targets, research questions and expected outcomes. Editor Z.W. Kundzewicz Citation Montanari, A., Young, G., Savenije, H.H.G., Hughes, D., Wagener, T., Ren, L.L., Koutsoyiannis, D., Cudennec, C., Toth, E., Grimaldi, S., Blöschl, G., Sivapalan, M., Beven, K., Gupta, H., Hipsey, M., Schaefli, B., Arheimer, B., Boegh, E., Schymanski, S.J., Di Baldassarre, G., Yu, B., Hubert, P., Huang, Y., Schumann, A., Post, D., Srinivasan, V., Harman, C., Thompson, S., Rogger, M., Viglione, A., McMillan, H., Characklis, G., Pang, Z., and Belyaev, V., 2013. “Panta Rhei—Everything Flows”: Change in hydrology and society—The IAHS Scientific Decade 2013–2022. Hydrological Sciences Journal. 58 (6) 1256–1275.

The enhancement of infiltration capacity in the presence of vegetation is well documented in arid ecosystems where it can significantly impact the water balance and vegetation spatial organization. To begin progress toward developing a theory of vegetation‐infiltration interactions across a wide spectrum of climate regimes, three key questions are addressed: (1) Does vegetation also enhance infiltration capacity in mesic to hydric climates, and if so, what processes contribute to this enhancement? (2) Is there a canonical relationship between vegetation biomass and infiltration rate? and (3) How does the vegetation‐infiltration feedback evolve across climatic gradients? To address these three questions, new field data examining biomass‐infiltration relationships in different vegetation types in a humid climate and on loamy soils are combined with a meta‐analysis of biomass‐infiltration relationships from nearly 50 vegetation communities spanning a climatic gradient from hyperarid deserts to the humid tropics and representing a full spectrum of soil types. Infiltration capacity increased as a power law function of aboveground biomass in water‐limited ecosystems, but vegetation biomass was not significantly correlated to infiltration capacity in humid climates. Across a climatic gradient from xeric to hydric, the slope of the power law relationship between aboveground biomass and infiltration capacity decreased.