About Us

The Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) is the UK’s Centre of Excellence for integrated research in land and freshwater ecosystems. As such, we address some of the world’s most fundamental and complex environmental challenges.

What do we do?

CEH is one of the largest independent environment research centres in the UK and covers a broad range of science including biodiversity, water, pollution and climate change.

We work in close partnership with the scientific community, government departments and agencies, as well as the private sector. Part of this includes coordinating a number of large programmes like Countryside Survey, a world leading study of change in the UK countryside that began in 1978. We also chair the Partnership for European Environmental Research (PEER), the most powerful European network in the environmental sciences.

How are we funded?

CEH is a wholly-owned research centre of the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), and is partly funded by a direct government grant via NERC. The remainder of our funding comes from grants and contract research funding, won in open competition.

How do we do it?

Our unique combination of cross-cutting scientific expertise, long-term environmental monitoring and state-of-the-art research infrastructure enable us to deliver practical solutions for achieving environmental sustainability.

CEH’s major resource is its staff, their skills and expertise. There are 340 scientists and 110 support staff working across five sites around the UK, including Edinburgh, and 160 active field sites. Support staff have expertise in human resources, training, finance, knowledge transfer, facilities and general administration.

Another major resource is the long-running national databases that CEH maintains and develops. They cover ecological, hydrological and genomic records (historical and active) many of which are unique. The databases provide a resource for scientific research anywhere in the UK and abroad. Exciting technological developments in methods of accessing and interrogating these databases underpin much of our work and are opening up new research areas that were not possible until very recently.

CEH is constantly updating its facilities and this year opened the Environment Centre Wales. It is currently developing new labs at it headquarters site in Wallingford.

For more detailed information about CEH and its work please visit our website at www.ceh.ac.uk