The importance of our work should be assessed with respect to its cross-cutting themes and its societal impacts. As a matter of fact, our research is articulated around several modern topics in physical sciences, namely scale and scaling processes, connectivity or self-organization to name a few. Our current approach to hydrologic prediction informed by field experiments is also in line with the necessary dialog between experimentalists and modellers that has been advocated in recent years. One of the key challenges in catchment science concerns the development of landscape-based indicators for assessing water quality and quantity in the context of global change affecting ecosystem services. We effectively address this challenge by comparing a wide range of pristine and inhabited watersheds; human elements are considered as effective parts of the ecosystem in the later. We also make an effective use of long-term datasets so as to identify change-initiating factors and to define reference conditions which can guide watershed stakeholders and managers. With that regards, inter-catchment comparison on a national or an international level is key in order to contextualize observations and share experiences. Besides, our interdisciplinary work focusing on the interactions between hydrology, ecology and climate is the way forward to link landscape processes with associated river dynamics and give the basis for sustainable management.