Skip to content

Environmental Engineering and Sustainability research

Our research in the Environmental Engineering and Sustainability area is applied in nature, and involves understanding the ecological consequences of environmental change caused by human activity.

Animals grazing on meadows

Research Contacts: Professor Gang Pan and Dr Richard Yarnell

The Environmental Engineering and Sustainability subject area is comprised of research active staff and PhD students from the College of Science and Technology, who share an interest in species and habitat conservation, and improving our understanding of ecological interactions.

Research is largely applied in nature, and involves understanding the ecological consequences of environmental change caused by human activity. We do this by studying organisms at an individual, population, and community level.

Centres and Groups

The Integrated Water, Energy and Food research centre is designed to study water pollution, industrial gas pollution, solid waste recycling, green energy production and food safety in an integrated manner. Our research focuses on the water and soil remediation by removing pollutants from waters and soils using microalgae technology, then utilising the pollutants and the algae biomass as a resource for green energy and soil remediation materials.

The Ecology and Conservation research group conducts research across five thematic areas:

  • Urban Ecology
  • Aquatic Ecology
  • Behavioural Ecology
  • Restoration Ecology
  • Wildlife and Habitat Conservation

Staff in the Research Group are leading and contributing to population assessments of endangered species such as brown hyena, aardwolf, and vultures and contributing to Reintroduction Guidelines. Population assessments have also been made for endangered species in protected areas of the world where resources are not available for basic population monitoring.

Our staff have also developed novel surveying methodologies which have been used to assess declining populations. For example, hedgehog footprint tunnels were designed at NTU, and used in the first National hedgehog survey in the UK. These methods are now widely used by the Mammal Society, Wildlife Trusts and across Europe to monitor hedgehog distributions.

Case study

The following Impact Case Study is linked to this Subject Area: