This conference will bring together engineers and researchers from engineering and ecological disciplines. The disciplines include, but are not limited to, hydrology, ecology, environmental engineering, biology, chemistry, geochemistry, environmental biogeochemistry, and subsurface microbiology. The unifying theme is the interaction between groundwater and/or surface water and ecological systems.

The goals of the conference are:
- to provide information that will help that interactions between groundwater, surface water and ecology are better understood, measured, simulated, and managed; and
- to improve the technological basis for policy decisions (including WFD implementation) related to the reconstruction of ecologically valuable environments and the use of water resources in these environments.