Our research

Research areas

• Modelling and measuring eco-hydraulic and eco-hydrologic relationships in river, lake and floodplain ecosystems
• Monitoring, evaluation and adaptive management of environmental water regimes
• Methods to improve evidence-based environmental management
• Effects of bioturbation in riverbeds on water quality and nutrient processing
• Fate and transport of pesticides in groundwater environments
• Modelling effects of river network structure on ecosystem services and environmental outcomes

Lab capabilities

The Sexton Laboratory at the University of Melbourne Parkville campus is the main ecohydraulics laboratory. It has flume facilities that can be set up with realistic sediment regimes, and recirculating pump facilities for other flow-through applications.

We use hydraulic and hydrodynamic modelling software including HEC-RAS, PHABSIM, and TuFlow. Ecological responses are analysed using software such as R, OpenBugs and SPSS. We make extensive use of GIS software for depicting stream networks, floodplains and related catchments.

Networks and partnerships

• Commonwealth Environmental Water Office
• Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning
• Victorian Environmental Water Holder
• Goulburn-Broken Catchment Management Authority
• Wimmera Catchment Management Authority
• Murray-Darling Basin Authority
• Melbourne Water
• Sydney Water

PhD students

• Abhisek Mondal
• Amali Dahanayake
• Charles Yang
• Chunying Wu
• Erandathi Ekanayake
• Lubna Meempatta
• Meghan Mussehl
• Peizhen Ren
• Seema Karki
• Sewwandi Wijesuriya
• Xinyang Fan
• Yiliang Du