You are here : Version anglaise > Research > Research Fields

Research Fields


The H2O'Lyon graduate school actions are structured around five major research fields with the involvement of laboratories and research teams partners.

1. Climate change and natural resources

This field addresses the interactions between hydrology, hydrogeology, geomorphology and ecology, with a focus on biodiversity and landscape evolution, land-use and land-cover change, and human uses and perceptions in a context of global change.

Scientific groups involved :

2. Water and sediment transfers, habitat and biodiversity

This field is mainly focused on physical and biological processes and their interactions, considering hydrological processes, sediment transport and associated forms, ecological habitats and biocenosis.
It covers challenging issues of environmental risk, restoration, mitigation and biodiversity, and the landscape trajectory of change and catchment and long term scales.

Scientific groups involved :

3. Pollutants, ecotoxicology and ecosystems

This field explore determinisms and pollutant flux effects according to hydrogeomorphic and anthropic contexts. It deals with low dose (endocrine disruptors) and cocktail effects, including biotic and abiotic stress interactions. The aim is also to improve understanding of the relationship between pressure indicators and status indicators and to integrate ecotoxicological risk assessment and the effect of emerging pollutants, processes at the water-sediment interface and actions of organisms on systems.

Scientific groups involved :

4. Holistic understanding and sustainable management of urban water

This field studies urban hydrology and associated water management stakes (rainwater and wastewater management, water supply and consumption management from molecular processes to territorial scales). It covers processes at the water-sediment interface and organism effects on hydrosystems.

Scientific groups involved :

5. Social monitoring and observation of watersheds

This field focuses on social issues and catchment socio-ecosystems. It includes :
1. Socio-historical trajectories, value systems, memory and social change, environmental legacies.
2. Social understanding related to hydrosystems and their management policies with spatial, legal, economical, sociological and political issues.
3. Ecosystems services provided by aquatic and riparian systems.

Scientific groups involved :