Ecological Engineering Undergraduate Advising Guide 2022-2023
Ecological Engineering is the design of sustainable systems in concert and consistent with ecological principles that integrates human activities with the natural environment to the benefit of both.
Ecological Engineering is focused on incorporating ecological principles into the design of both natural and human-dominated systems. It uses ecology as its fundamental design paradigm, emphasizing resiliency, adaptation and systems approaches to develop engineered solutions that are sustainable, intrinsically incorporate a broad range of biological systems as components, and emphasize mutual improvement of both human and natural environments. This focus on incorporation of ecological principles in engineering design to promote development of robust, sustainable systems sets it apart from other engineering disciplines.
Within the Department of Biological and Ecological Engineering, program options are currently available at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Active research projects
This research area applies principles of ecosystems science to the design and analysis of a wide range of processes and activities.
- Global Climate Change Modeling (Bachelet)
- Big Wood Basin Alternative Futures - explore interactions between agriculture, urban land use practices, and recreational activities under future conditions of climate and water supply in the Big Wood Basin in central Idaho. (Bolte)
- Tillamook Coastal Futures-exploring the impacts of climate change-induced sea level change, population growth, and development may impact coastal communities (Bolte)
- Willamette Water 2100-evaluating how climate change, population growth, and economic growth will alter the availability and the use of water. (Bolte)
- Central Oregon Forest, People and Fire-improving our understanding of how biophysical systems, management actions, and socio-economic influences interact to affect sustainability in fire-prone landscapes under climate change. (Bolte)
- Coupled Natural and Human Systems in the Southern Willamette Valley-examine the interactions of climate change, land management policies and forest succession on fire hazard and ecosystem trajectories in the wild land-urban interface. (Bolte)
- High Resolution Fiber Optic Measurement of Temperature to Monitor Complex Ecological Processes, CTEMPs Publications (Selker)
- Summer Institute in EcoInformatics (Tullos)
- Reservoir operations under climate change (Tullos)
- Sediment dynamics of dam removal (Tullos)
- Fluid and fish behavior around engineered log jams (Tullos)
- Airborne Microwave Observatory of Sub-canopy & Subsurface Mission (Cuenca)