About

The Center for Ecohydraulics Research (CER) is located in the Idaho Water Center in downtown Boise, Idaho. It is a graduate education and research program dedicated to studying links between physical processes and aquatic ecosystems. Students can be either full time or part-time enabling them to continue working for agencies, the private sector or NGOs while pursuing research of direct relevance to their employer. Most students are residents of Boise, but some are located outside Idaho or the United States, with coursework delivered through Engineering Outreach.

CER's goal is providing a quality graduate experience in a small collegial setting. Students gain experience in:

• Fundamentals and theory of hydraulic engineering, fluvial geomorphology and ecology
• Computational and analytical models
• Field methods
• Laboratory instrumentation and physical modeling using our large-scale flume in CER's Stream Laboratory

Current research includes sediment transport in headwater streams; hyporheic flows; systems approach for understanding the response of endangered species to reservoir operation; sustainability of pools in gravel-bed rivers; river-floodplain aquatic habitat modeling; snow-pack behavior in heterogeneous terrain; vegetation modeling; river restoration; laboratory instrumentation and developing sustainability metrics for water resource management.

CER is based on the concept of community science. The CER field monitoring equipment, CER Stream Laboratory, computational facilities and databases are available to the scientific community, as well as the researchers and students at the University of Idaho.