Handbook of catchment management It is with much pleasure that we introduce you to the new edition of the Handbook of Catchment Management a decade after the first. The hydrological cycle has always the most important earth system process on the planet but how has our relationship with water changed in the space of a decade As population continues to grow the human induced pressures on catchments have never been so great but this has also been accompanied by an explosion in information technology which has made our current world very different from that of ten years ago. At school we learn of water as a virtuous cycle where evaporation from the ocean generates cloud which deposits as pristine rain on the landscape which then returns through the multitude of streams rivers lakes back to the sea (along with some recharging to groundwater). The physics of this process havent changed (and will never change) and the water cycle continues to function but our human impact on that process has never been greater