The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
The Centre for Ecology & Hydrology is a Research Centre of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). CEH is the UK’s Centre of Excellence for research in the land-based and freshwater environmental sciences, and has specialist skills in a wide range of environmental disciplines ranging in scale from the gene to whole-Earth systems.
CEH’s research is aimed at improving our understanding of both the environment and the processes that underlay the Earth’s life support systems. We are particularly interested in the impacts of human activity on natural environments. CEH works in interdisciplinary areas of science, and has unique long-term environmental datasets, which are two major strengths that brings to the Lancaster Environment Centre. The Director of CEH is Professor Patricia Nuttall OBE, who is located at the CEH HQ in Wallingford, which together with retained sites at Bangor, Edinburgh and Lancaster form the basis to a newly restructured CEH.
In 2003-4, staff from former CEH sites at Merlewood and Windermere, (Cumbria), relocated to purpose-built accommodation on the University campus. Besides contributing their own skills on-site to the Lancaster Environment Centre, they act as a gateway to the expertise, skills and knowledge of the whole of CEH and its staff which provides a powerful resource for building multi-skilled research teams.
CEH has recently re-organised the way that it is managed and run, and now operates a science-driven framework of four major Science Programmes: Biodiversity, Water, Biogeochemistry and Environmental Inofmratics; and the two cross-cutting themes of Climate Change and Sustainable Economies.
CEH’s Science Programmes are an ideal complement for the skills and expertise already present on the Lancaster campus, and are underpinning the development of new areas of science within the Lancaster Environment Centre.