**Acknowledgements**

This review is a commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the Chinese basin study and the 37th anniversary of the establishment of the Chuzhou Hydrology Laboratory (CHL). The senior author (W-Z Gu) has been fortunate to render his services to the both from their beginning, with grateful heart he is indebted to a number of people including colleagues, experts, professors, and local peasants, who have helped, succored, supported make this possible. We are very grateful for those who have made numerous efforts for the reborn renovation of the CHL after long abandonment and, for its leaping forward from manual to digital: Academician Jian-Yun Zhang, Prof. Jiu-Fu Liu, and many other experts in the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources. We also thank many foreign experts who have encouraged, helped, taught and guided our work over the years especially during our difficult, including Jeffrey McDonnell, Keith Beven, Henry Lin, Mebus Geyh, Carol Kendall, Vance Kennedy, Norman Peters, Michael Sklash, А.И. Шикломанов, Joel Gat, Verhagen B and Klaus Froehlich. We also acknowledge many colleagues in the CHL for their hard work in the field.

This work was supported by the grants from the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2017YFC0403500) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 91647203, No.91647111, and No.51609145).
