IAH Netherlands Chapter History

The Netherlands Chapter started in 1972 when IAH counted only a few Dutch members. The Chapter was established on the initiative of the Hydrologische Kring (Hydrological Circle), a subgroup of the Royal Geological and Mining Society of the Netherlands. The Hydrological Circle was open to scientists belonging to other scientific organisations interested in groundwater, such as agronomists, civil engineers, ecologists, geochemists, geographers or soil scientists.

During the opening session in 1970, the Hydrological Circle elected Caesar Voûte, an early member of IAH, as president and Erik Romijn as secretary; together they formed the first Dutch National Committee (NC) for IAH. After Hubert van Waegeningh had taken over the secretariat of the NC in 1975, membership of the Dutch IAH group grew rapidly.

At the same time, the Hydrological Circle had grown to about 250 members in the 1970s and was on its way to becoming an independent society, the Netherlands Hydrological Society (NHV), which was founded in 1990. However, at that time, the IAH Council aimed at more direct control over both national committees and groups, so it proved impossible to incorporate the NC IAH within the NHV. Therefore, a provisional executive for the NC was formed with Erik Romijn as chairman and Hubert van Waegeningh as secretary-treasurer. They were tasked with formulating new NC statutes.

To boost Dutch activities with respect to IAH, the provisional NC organised the “International Symposium on Remote Sensing and Water Resources” in 1990 at ITC, Enschede, and in 1994 the symposium “Netherlands Hydrological Research in International Cooperation” at IHE, Delft, in which also NHV, amongst others, participated, thus setting the scene for future co-operation with other societies. A definite executive of the NC IAH was elected in 1998. The Netherlands Institute of Applied Geosciences (TNO) and, subsequently, Deltares have been willing to support the NC by hosting the secretariat, to the advantage of the Netherlands National Committee for IAH.

Since then, however, a close relationship between the IAH Netherlands Chapter and the NHV has been maintained, with IAH-NL focusing on groundwater and international connections.