Prof. Ruud Bartholomeus PhD MSc

Ruud Bartholomeus works as Chief Science Officer of KWR and Principal Scientist of the Ecohydrology team on a robust freshwater supply in rural areas, and is special professor ‘plant water stress and regional water management’ at Wageningen University & Research. He specialises in hydrological and physiological processes in the interplay between soil, plants and the atmosphere. In his doctoral work at VU University Amsterdam and KWR, he developed climate-robust links between water, oxygen and vegetation, as part of a model to predict the effects of climate change on the natural vegetation. He has drawn on this expertise in contributing to the development of the WaterVision Agriculture and the WaterVision Nature tools. Aligning regional freshwater supply and demand is central to Ruud’s work. This involves combining scientific knowledge and technological solutions such as (cross-sectoral) water reuse, sub-irrigation with (industrial) residual water, and online management of climate-adaptive drainage with the process of having water managers, drinking water utilities, industry and farmers work together to achieve sufficient freshwater. On the Ecohydrology team, Ruud leads the ‘Freshwater Resources Management’ line of research. He is involved in the Lumbricus programme and KLIMAP, in which knowledge institutes and water managers work together on a climate-robust soil and water system. He is involved in the Water in the Circular Economy initiative of the Joint Research Programme of KWR and the water utilities. He is also chairman of the Scientific Council of KWR, chairman of the Netherlands Hydrological Society (NHV), member of the Expert Network on Freshwater and Drought (ENZD, Delta program) and member of the core team of the Blue Route within the national science agenda (NWA).