Biological & Ecological Engineering

• Watershed hydrology and modeling
• Implications of evolving land use patterns and climate change
• Alternative futures analyses for land use planning and sustainability
• Geographic Information Systems and simulation of environmental processes

Current Research:

• Alternative futures for Skagit and Kitsap Counties, Washington State - A set of studies focusing on the application of alternative futuring strategies in the Puget Sound basin. (http://envision.bioe.orst.edu)

• Assessment of Hydrologic and Water Quality Response to Intensive Cellulosic Biofuel Silviculture - The water quantity and water quality impacts from intensive management for biofuels are largely unknown, and yet there is increasing interest in increasing both the area and intensity of cellulosic biofuel development.. This work, funded by the Department of Energy, is designed to evaluate tradeoffs between cellulosic biofuel production and water quality.

• Ecohydrological controls on watershed response to land use change in tropical montane forest - An NSF funded project involving collaborators from OSU, Berkeley, ISU. Our primary contribution to the larger project is the incorporation of field-based measurements in the development and application of a set of environmental models.

• Pesticide fate and transport modeling to inform decision-making - We are developing a web-based application strategy for two commonly used regulatory models (PRZM and EXAMS). The models will become part of new on-line approach that will rank pesticide products for impacts on soil, water and air quality, avian and aquatic life, beneficial organisms, and worker and consumer health and safety (http://www.ipminstitute.org/prime/index.htm).

• Watershed hydrology and C and N fluxes in the Xilin River - A sub-project of an international research effort focused on matter fluxes in Inner Mongolia (http://www.magim.net/)

• Watershed hydrology in a tropical mountain forest - This work is funded as part of the German DFG funded project called Biodiversity and sustainable management of a mega-diverse mountain ecosystem in south Ecuador.(http://www.tropicalmountainforest.org/)