The objective of this special issue, in the spirit of Mikhail Budyko's classic work, is to bring together a broad range of papers that address the following, but not by any means limited to, research questions:

1. water balance patterns: new approaches to overcome the steady-state assumption of the Budyko hypothesis, process-based understanding of the conditions forming up those catchments under steady states and the conditions of a catchment migrating from one steady state to another;
2. self-organized patterns of water balance variability at other timescales, such as seasonal water balance, flow duration curves, streamflow recession curves and flood frequency curves;
3. exploring and identifying new patterns of catchment co-evolution across space scales and timescales such as, but not limited to, vegetation organization, soil erosion and drainage density, and biogeochemical cycles;
4. process-based understanding of the role of climate, soil, vegetation, topography in shaping recognized self-organization patterns;
5. applications of self-organization patterns for model development and parameterization and water resources management.