The Team at ELR
Mountain West
Nick Bouwes
Dr. Nick Bouwes has been working on salmon and steelhead issues in the Pacific Northwest for the past 20 yrs. Nick started Eco Logical Research in 2000 and has contracted with several agencies to develop and implement large scale monitoring programs, design and implement watershed scale restoration experiments, and provide analytical frameworks to evaluate and provide context to the enormous data sets generated from such projects. He provides oversight on ELR projects and coordinates with state, federal, tribal, NGOs, and other consulting firms on regional salmonid issues. He works on biometric and data analyses, modeling, experimental and monitoring design and implementation, stream restoration, fisheries research and aquatic ecology and has detailed knowledge of the salmon, steelhead, and bull trout issues. Dr. Bouwes also ensures that ELR documents and disseminates this information in reports, peer-reviewed literature, professional conferences and workshops to transfer this knowledge to benefit natural resource management. Nick also co-founded Anabranch Solutions with Dr. Joe Wheaton and Dr. Steve Bennett to design and implement stream restoration. He is also an adjunct faculty in the Department of Watershed Science at Utah State University where he shares the Fluvial Habitat Center with Joe, advices graduate students, and teaches fish habitat, ecology, and ecohydraulic modeling.
Stephen Bennett
Dr. Bennett has been working for ELR since 2007 as coordinator of projects in southeast Washington. He is responsible for coordination and stakeholder meetings, geomorphic and fish assessment, restoration planning, design, and reporting. Stephen’s focus in the last 10 years has been on developing and implementing restoration and monitoring of the Asotin Creek Intensively Monitored Watershed Project assessing the effectiveness of stream restoration using large woody debris. Stephen has worked closely with the ACCD, Pomeroy Conservation District, Clarkston PUD, and Salmon Recovery Funding Board on several projects in watersheds in southeast Washington (e.g., Asotin IMW, Asotin Geomorphic Assessment and Conceptual Restoration Plan, Asotin County Voluntary Stewardship Plan Work Plan, Tucannon Monitoring, Expert Panel, Pataha Restoration, and Alpowa Restoration). Stephen also co-founded Anabranch Solutions with Dr. Joe Wheaton and Dr. Nick Bouwes to design and implement stream restoration. He also is an adjunct faculty and employee in the Watershed Science Department at Utah State University where he works in the Fluvial Habitat Center.
Scott Shahverdian
Scott is a fluvial geomorphologist and has worked in Washington, Idaho, and Utah on watershed assessments and managed a wide range of stream restoration projects. His primary tasks include field habitat and riparian surveys, geomorphic and fish assessment, reach classification, condition assessment, recovery potential, restoration planning. He has a background evaluating the effects of wildfire on low-order streams, using low-tech methods to restore wadeable streams, GIS analysis, and field surveys. As a fluvial geomorphologist he has experience combining remote sensing and field survey data to perform assessments that range from the reach scale to the watershed scale. As a project manager he also has experience working with diverse stakeholders, including public land managers, and private land owners to implement and assess stream restoration projects. Scott also works for Anabranch Solutions.
Doris Bennett
Doris started working for ELR in 2008 and is our primary administrative assistant. She is responsible for payroll, invoicing, accounting, and a million other things that keeps our company on track. Doris has a background in medical laboratory technology.
Pacific Northwest
Nick Weber
Nick Weber has been assessing fish and their habitat in the West for 15 yrs. Nick coordinates with local, state, and federal agencies on monitoring and restoration efforts in central Oregon. Nick has a diverse background in data management, statistical analysis, and field methodology. He has implemented and trained others in multiple protocols used to characterize fish habitat and fish populations. He manages several projects and is responsible for designing and implementing monitoring, creating data apps, databases, and data-driven web applications, R and Python programming, statistical analysis, data visualization, modeling, and report writing. Nick was the project coordinator for the Bridge Creek IMW for several years. Nick also designs and implements restoration for Anabranch Solutions.
Gus Wathen
Gus has over 15 years of experience exploring relationships between stream dwelling salmonids and their habitat. Gus was responsible for operating the PIT-tagging infrastructure as part of the Bridge Creek IMW, which included ensuring the data quality for tagging efforts in excess of 100,000 steelhead and maintaining an array of PIT-tag antennas throughout the study area. Gus also enjoys applying his technical skills to develop and construct custom fish capture and PIT-tag detection devices for specific project needs. He is the field lead for multiple projects monitoring fish and habitat responses to stream restoration. He is responsible for managing databases, data analyses and summarization, and report writing. Gus also designs and implements restoration for Anabranch Solutions.
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Andy Hill
Andy Hill has over 15 years of experience coordinating and conducting standardized fish habitat monitoring efforts throughout the Columbia River Basin. He has a background in spatial analysis which includes using topographic surveys to model stream geomorphology, hydraulic models, fish habitat, habitat suitability models to assess habitat conditions and project effectiveness. He is responsible for field habitat and riparian surveys, geomorphic and fish assessment, reach classification, condition assessment, recovery potential, restoration planning, statistical analyses, and report writing. He also works on development of habitat monitoring plans and designs, implementation, and data analysis/interpretation for monitoring efforts to assess the effectiveness of stream restoration. Andy also designs and implements restoration for Anabranch Solutions.
North Arrow Research
ELR partners closely with North Arrow Research to develop novel approaches to analyze, visualize, and organize spatial data.
Philip Bailey
Dr. Philip Bailey is a longterm collaborator with ELR. Philip is passionate about solving complex spatial problems and for the last 21 years he has worked in various fields – but never far from developing research GIS applications and spatial decision support systems.
Working closely with Nick Bouwes and Andy Hill at ELR, Philip developed several models and tools for the Columbia Habitat Monitoring Program (CHaMP) including the Topographic Toolbar for processing survey data, the fish habitat model for quantifying juvinile and adult salmonid habitat as well as the Net Rate of Energy Intake NREI) bioenergetics model. Philip's contributions focused on stabilizing proof of concepts and enabling the models to be run at increasingly larger scales. He is currently collaborating with ELR on refining the Beaver Restoration Analysis Toolkit (BRAT), enhancing it to run on a wider variety of inputs at the regional scale.
Philip has a PhD in GIS and remote sensing from the Department of Geography at the University of Southampton, UK, and a Joint bachelors in Geography and Topographic Science from Swansea University, Wales. Prior to starting North Arrow Research, he was Managing Partner and team lead of the Environmental Information Systems Team with the firm ESSA Technologies.
Matt Reimer
Matt Reimer has collaborated with ELR on several projects over recent years. With a degree in physics and a proven background in software engineering, Matt's speciality is taking early software prototypes and ideas and making them achieve their full potential. This leverages Matt's prodigious talent for finding and learning cutting edge technologies that fit together effectivity to achieve the desired results.
Matt also has a long history working with web technologies on both the front and back end. Working with ELR he successfully implemented a cloud-based system on Amazon's Web Services for the automation of tens of thousands of ecological model processes, all running in parallel and feeding into a central database. Part of this system involved working with ELR scientists to refine the Net Rate of Energy Intake (NREI) model.
Currently Matt is collaborating with ELR on several initiatives related to using beaver to restore ecological sustainability. He has led the effort to build a citizen science mobile app for rapid environmental monitoring.