F Richard Hauer

F. Richard (Ric) Hauer, is Director of the University of Montana's Center for Integrated Research on the Environment (CIRE) and Professor of Stream Ecology at the Flathead Lake Biological Station where he taught Stream Ecology for >25 years. His major research interests encompass the broad, interdisciplinary field of ecosystem ecology with focus on freshwaters, especially running waters and gravel-bed river floodplains and wetlands. The breadth of his research spans from physical processes of...See more

F. Richard (Ric) Hauer, is Director of the University of Montana's Center for Integrated Research on the Environment (CIRE) and Professor of Stream Ecology at the Flathead Lake Biological Station where he taught Stream Ecology for >25 years. His major research interests encompass the broad, interdisciplinary field of ecosystem ecology with focus on freshwaters, especially running waters and gravel-bed river floodplains and wetlands. The breadth of his research spans from physical processes of sediment transport and groundwater/surface water interactions to aquatic insect life histories and ecosystem assessment. He is particularly interested in the application of remotely sensed data to understanding biophysical processes of floodplain ecology. To this end, he pilots his own airplane in the acquisition of digital imagery used to evaluate the landscape scale linkages between hydrology, geomorphology and ecology in river and floodplain ecosystems. Dr. Hauer has conducted his research around the eastern Pacific-rim from Alaska to Patagonia; his primary research site being the transboundary Crown-of-the-Continent Ecosystem and the Flathead River of Montana and British Columbia. While it was the fascination with aquatic invertebrates, especially caddisflies, that captured his interest, it has been his love for streams and rivers as disproportionately important components of biodiversity of mountain landscapes that has maintained that passion. Dr. Hauer has published >100 research articles in international peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Science Advances, BioScience and Freshwater Science. In addition to his personal research, he has served at the national level in developing environmental policy and implementation of environmental assessment in the Clean Water Act working with both the US Army Corps of Engineers and the US EPA. Ric is past-President of the international scientific society "Society for Freshwater Science." At the University of Montana, Hauer held the Stream Ecology Endowed Chair at Flathead Lake Biological Station from 2000-2016 and received the university's Distinguished Scholar Award in 2011. He is founding director of the university's interdisciplinary sciences graduate program, Systems Ecology. See less