The Centre for Ecology & Hydrology is publically owned (governed by the Natural Environment Research Council), and its remit is to perform integrated research in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems and their interaction with the atmosphere. Our main site is at Wallingford, in South Oxfordshire, just 25 minutes on the bus from Oxford.
As part of NERC, we deliver independent research, collate and archive key long-term datasets of ecological and hydrological functioning from around the world, and train and transfer knowledge in the environmental sciences. We fully recognise that planet Earth is a complex, interacting system, and so we collaborate tightly with universities, the other NERC research centres, and with the UK Meteorological Office. This allows the role of our research in the broader context (e.g. global climate change) to be assessed. Many of our projects are controlled by National Capability funds, and this creates highly targeted answers to environmental issues of concern, and that may be related to stability of livelihood, property and in the most extreme case, safety and preservation of life.
CEH is a very open organisation, and we are always happy to host visitors and to fully integrate them in to our daily scientific routines. We are also happy to visit, and indeed Chris Huntingford (CEH DTP contact) is kindly provided a desk in Oxford’s Atmospheric Physics department, which he uses frequently.
CEH would like to engage with the DTP in the following ways:
- Design and implementation of studentship projects.
- Act as a responsive and available co-supervisor on DPhil projects.
- Host (based predominantly at CEH) one or more students per year from the DTP, relative to the size of the DTP.
- Offer access to generic/transferable skills courses, facilities and study sites.
- Introduce students to more policy-driven research, highlights its rewards and its challenges.
- Provide a broad assessment of current research gaps in the hydrological cycle, ecological functioning and climate change.
