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The State Centre of Excellence for Ecohydrology, located at The University of Western Australia’s Crawley campus, is an extension of the original WA Agricultural Research Centre for Ecohydrology established in 2006. Developed as a joint research venture between the Western Australian Department of Agriculture and Food and UWA, the Centre aims to be recognised as the leading ecohydrological research centre in the Southern Hemisphere.

Led by Projects Director, Dr Neil Coles and Research Director, Professor Keith Smettem, the Centre will encourage both collaborative and innovative research and the development of an applied approach to graduate and post-graduate education programs to provide the skills required by industry and government (i.e. agriculture, horticulture, mining, water resource management and environmental monitoring). The Centre engages students with industry through innovative research programs which aim to deliver tangible benefits to the agricultural and water industries of Western Australia.

Funding for the Centre is expanding and strengthening its research capabilities. The State Research Excellence Program has awarded the Centre $1.5M to expand and integrate hydrological and environmental research in collaboration with agricultural and water industries within the State. A further $5.5M has been provided through collaborative partners UWA, Department of Agriculture, Edith Cowan University, Department of Water and the Water Corporation over the next three years.

This funding has enhanced the Centre’s capacity to develop research projects designed to evaluate and manage the impacts of climate change on WA industries and natural resource assets in the regional catchments of south-west Western Australia

. Research Links By its very nature Ecohydrology is interdisciplinary – bringing together hydrologists (with surface, subsurface and groundwater expertise), ecologists and physiologists dealing with plant responses to water and nutrients. To achieve this the Centre will build capacity to address regional-scale hydro-climatic vegetation interactions, soil hydrologic-vegetation interactions and state of the art sensor technologies for collecting cutting edge environmental data. The Centre will act as a nexus for research conducted in WA and will be instrumental in integrating and attributing spatially representative natural resource data sets to enable the agricultural industry to evaluate the impacts of climate change on crop productivity and the potential for establishing new industries in the face of rainfall variability.

The Centre has already established significant collaborative projects with the Department of Environment and the Federal Government through its Resource Condition Monitoring Program to manage biodiversity decline and salinity impacts on natural resources. As part of the expanded research program the Centre has established links with researchers at Hohai University in China and the University of Queensland to enhance understanding of hydrological process and impacts of water redistribution in semi-arid landscapes. Additional information on the Centre and its research programs can be found at www.ecohydrology.uwa.edu.au