We’re excited to share that ECoENet’s latest community survey paper, Charting the evolution of ecohydraulics: A community perspective on skills, technology, training needs and challenges, has just been published. The article is based on a survey we ran around the 15th International Symposium on Ecohydraulics and Fish Passage in Québec in 2024. The article and survey results paint a picture of recent developments in the community and where the field of ecohydraulics stands today.
What did we find?
With 105 respondents spanning various career stages, continents, and professional backgrounds, the survey captured a genuine cross-section of the ecohydraulics community. By comparing results to a similar survey conducted by our network in 2018, we were able to trace the evolution of this relatively young, interdisciplinary field.
A few highlights stood out:
The field is growing globally. While Europe and North America still dominate, participation from South America and Africa increased noticeably compared to 2018. This is a positive sign of an international community taking shape.
The core challenges haven’t gone away. Respondents consistently agreed that the same five hurdles first proposed by Wilkes et al. (2016) are still valid today. These include: understanding biophysical relationships, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, ensuring transferability across scales, strengthening links to management, and improving public and political engagement.
Confidence is high in traditional skills and low in emerging ones. Participants across career stages reported feeling comfortable with fieldwork, literature reviews, and numerical modelling. But when it came to machine learning, UAVs, remote sensing, and AI, nearly 40% of all respondents reported having no experience at all. At the same time, the survey shows growing awareness of and demand for advanced methods, especially those linked to data acquisition, automation, and behavioural observation.
Early-career and senior researchers see themselves similarly. There was little difference in self-assessed skill levels between ECRs and senior scientists, which raises interesting questions about self-perception and benchmarking in an era where digital tools can lower the apparent barrier to entry.
If you want to get more insights into our community, read the full article here!
So, what’s next?
Since the closing of the 2024 survey, we have experienced mass-accessibility to large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, and DeepSeek, which hold tremendous potential for science and practice. As ecohydraulics evolves toward increasingly data-intensive and interdisciplinary approaches, AI and language-based tools offer significant opportunities to support research, education, and application. Yet in 2024, our community still felt underprepared when it came to such emerging technologies.
That’s exactly why we launched a new, focused survey around ISE 2026 in Lausanne. Building on what we’ve learned, we will zoom in on the use of Large Language Models, AI-assisted workflows, ethical attitudes towards these tools, and their expected future effects on research and education.
The survey is still open, and we would love to hear your thoughts. Please take 10 minutes to complete it and help us better understand how AI is shaping the field of ecohydraulics. Access the survey here!