RSM River Mechanics Podcast

Dr. Gary Parker is one of the defining figures in modern river mechanics and sediment transport. He's a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois or Urbana Champlain where he's been since 2005.  Before that he was a distinguished professor at the University of Minnesota. He's a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and has won more scientific awards than I can count - in multiple disciplines - that could each be thought of as a career-defining honor. You do not have to dig very deep into many of the topics we talk about in this podcast before you encounter his work. His early research on channel form, meander mechanics, and dynamic armoring may each represent Kuhnian paradigm shifts in those sub-disciplines. But part of the evidence of his influence is that I don't think there's another name that has come up more often in these conversations as I've talked to subject matter experts about how they understand rivers. When I first got interested in sediment transport I found Dr. Parker’s Morphodynamics website:Before Universitas started making their materials publicly available (shoot, before there was much on the internet) Dr. Parker put the notes and code from his Morphodynamics class up on a website.  I spent hours pouring over them. Then years before the ASC 110 manual of practice was published, he posted his chapter on gravel bed rivers on that same website, which may be the single most influential document in my career. Christopher Lee, who played Saruman in the Lord of the Rings films, used to talk about how much he wanted to be in those films because he read the books through every year. That was me with Dr. Parker's chapter for at least a decade. I sat down and read that chapter every year to try to contextualize the new mysteries I'd encountered in these systems since the last time I picked it up. Later, as I started my graduate work, it became clear that you simply could not get up to speed on modern Morphodynamics and sediment transport without doing business with Gary's literature.Dr Parker also has an unusual facility to translate complex river mechanics principles into fun, vivid, metaphor…and if you have followed my teaching at all, you might suspect that this is one of my favorite flavors of science communication.So, I am obviously delighted to wrap up this season of the RSM River Mechanics podcast talking gravel bed rivers with Dr. Gary Parker.This series was funded by the Regional Sediment Management (RSM) program.Mike Loretto edited the first three seasons and created the theme music.Tessa Hall is editing most of Season 4.Stanford Gibson (HEC Sediment Specialist) hosts.Video shorts and other bonus content are available at the podcast website:https://www.hec.usace.army.mil/confluence/rasdocs/rastraining/latest/the-rsm-river-mechanics-podcast...but most of the supplementary videos are available on the HEC Sediment YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/user/stanfordgibsonIf you have guest recommendations or feedback you can reach out to me on LinkedIn or ResearchGate or fill out this recommendation and feedback form: https://forms.gle/wWJLVSEYe7S8Cd248

About a year ago an interdisciplinary tam at Oregon State invited a collection of subject matter experts for workshop on floodplain sedimentation processes.  The workshop took up a very specific question but gathering this much expertise on floodplain landforms and processes generated a wide-ranging discussion of how floodplains work, how to restore them, and even what they are.  So when Desiree Tullos reached out and invited me I brought my podcast gear in just in case… And I just found the discussions so useful that I wanted to share it with the other practitioners that have gathered around this podcast project.  We have spent a lot of time talking about channel form, function, and process on this podcast, I couldn’t pass up the chance to give some time to these other, underrated, river landforms. So I asked three of the participants:  Dr. Desiree Tullos, Dr. Janine Castro and Dr. Jonathan Czuba if they’d be willing to debrief the themes and take aways from the gathering…and I think did a fantastic job replicating a lot of the value I got out of being at this workshop in this interview, with almost no prep.Desiree Tullos is a professor of Biological and Ecological Engineering at Oregon State and was one of the point people responsible for convening and imagining this workshop. Her research emphasizes sustainable engineering and management of rivers by examining the intersections of hydraulics, infrastructure, ecology, and society, and heavily emphasizes engaging and mentoring undergraduate students in research with societal relevance. Janine Castro is co-founder and Technical Director of the River Restoration Program at Portland State University and is one of the five founding members of River Restoration Northwest.  She recently retired from Federal service, where she worked as a geomorphologist for 34 years.Jon Czuba spent most of his 20 years measuring, modeling, and analyzing sediment transport across the U.S.  as a Professor of Ecological Engineering in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech.  He recently received an early career research award from the Universities Council on Water Resources for his work including publications in Science, Nature, and PNAS.This is a link to a version of the talk I gave at this workshop on floodplain modeling and processes: https://youtu.be/keGQviqInR0This series was funded by the Regional Sediment Management (RSM) program.Mike Loretto edited the first three seasons and created the theme music.Tessa Hall is editing most of Season 4.Stanford Gibson (HEC Sediment Specialist) hosts.Video shorts and other bonus content are available at the podcast website:https://www.hec.usace.army.mil/confluence/rasdocs/rastraining/latest/the-rsm-river-mechanics-podcast...but most of the supplementary videos are available on the HEC Sediment YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/user/stanfordgibsonIf you have guest recommendations or feedback you can reach out to me on LinkedIn or ResearchGate or fill out this recommendation and feedback form: https://forms.gle/wWJLVSEYe7S8Cd248