What We Do

CEREO fulfills a critical need within WSU helping students, faculty, staff, and administrators address current environmental challenges that are increasing in size, urgency, complexity, and integration. CEREO meets this need by creating collaborative structures to develop and provide thought leadership, convene multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary teams of experts, and build and support integrated opportunities for research, education, and outreach. 

We work with faculty and communities

CEREO helps harness the creativity and expertise of both faculty and community partners in Native American Tribes, government, non-governmental entities, and industry in developing new and/or improved decision-making to ensure resilience of integrated food, energy, and water systems, both domestically and internationally. CEREO draws on faculty and collaborators who are actively involved in a variety of food, energy, water, and ecosystem-focused disciplines at various locations throughout the Columbia River Basin and the Americas promoting community-engagement for use-inspired research, education and outreach.

Broadly address environmental sustainability

CEREO supports faculty with broad interests in sustainability, including those studying climate adaptation and mitigation strategies, environmental justice, urban design, public health, and more. CEREO is committed to the support of research on interrelationships between culture, society, and the environment. CEREO’s mission includes environmental education and outreach, as well as understanding the challenges of ecological literacy and environmental citizenship.

Tackle global environmental change

Research, education, and outreach are all needed to deal with the challenges of global environmental change. CEREO’s Affiliate faculty expertise spans a wide variety of topics including the atmospheric sciences, water resources, energy resources, soil science, subsurface science, bio-geochemical cycling, carbon sequestration, social/political impacts and prioritization, maintenance of biodiversity, and the evolution of infectious diseases. Faculty experts at WSU also build understanding of the temporal responses, both paleo and evolutionary. CEREO is especially interested in encouraging research on the complex interactions between human and natural systems.