RSM River Mechanics Podcast

We are wrapping up season 1 with the second half of our first interview.  This is the rest of my conversation with US Army Corps of Engineers River Mechanics and River Engineering Subject-Matter Expert, Dr. David Biedenharn. If you have feedback on this season, recommendations for season 2 guests, or want to weigh in on our classic paper survey, there is a google form on the podcast website below....

 The regressive erosion on the Rio Coca (Ecuador) may be the morphological event of our generation.  But, because it happened in February 2020, when there was not much room in the news cycle, most people haven't heard about it...even in the geomorph community.  In this episode we try to rectify that.  I talked to Pablo Espinoza Giron and Pedro David Barrera Crespo, two of the scientists/engin...

Dr. Richard Iverson led the mud and debris flow investigations at the USGS Cascade Volcano Observatory for years, including large scale flume and numerical work that unlocked a remarkable number of new insights about these high-concentration flows.  His  findings have influenced the way I  think about these events more than any other source. With the rising interest in post-wildfire debris flow ha...

Dr. Katie Brutsche led the Regional Sediment Management Program for several years.  Regional Sediment Management is the "RSM" in the title of this podcast, and the reason this project exists.  RSM is the aspirational conceptual model of the Corps of Engineer's sediment management over the last couple decades.  We talk about the principles of RSM, the RSM process, some example projec...

 I recently described Chris Nygaard as the Corps’ BSPS, our 'Big Sediment Pulse Specialist.'  He led sediment analysis and modeling on the Corps’ latest evaluation of Mount Saint Helens downstream-sediment impacts and a dam removal alternative on the Snake River.  In those projects he analyzed the fate of sediment pulses (real or hypothetical) on the order of hundreds-of-millions of tons...

We plan to occasionally push out short bonus episodes between our longform conversations.  This first bonus short is a conversation with two of the organizers of the Federal Interagency Sediment Conference, which will be in St Louis in May.  SEDHYD is a conference that specializes in applied river mechanics and engineering topics, and has a lot of overlap with the topics of the conversations we&ap...

 John Remus leads a team of Corps of Engineers, sediment and river engineering, subject-matter experts.  This team (which I like to call "the Sediment Avengers") deploys to the Corps' most problematic sediment and morphological challenges around the country.  And that's a fitting role for the man who manages the river sometimes called the "Big Muddy."  In his "da...

Dr. Joanna Curran is probably best know for her early, academic, laboratory work on step-pool systems, gravel cluster turbulence,  and the Wilcock and Crowe transport function.  But she has since worked on northwestern rivers with several engineering firms, and most recently joined the Corps of Engineers at the Seattle District.  This academic/private sector/public sector perspective and experimen...

Ron Copeland has worked for the Corps of Engineers for over 5 decades, 52 years at the Los Angeles district and the Corps' Coastal and Hydraulics lab in Vicksburg Mississippi. He also worked for 10 years as a principle engineer at Mobile Boundary Hydraulics, which was the premiere 1D sediment transport modeling firm for decades.  But Dr. Copeland has not only been on a very short list of the...

Molly Wood is the National Sediment Specialist for the USGS Water Resources Mission Area’s Observing Systems Division. She develops policies and methods for measuring fluvial sediment transport and for computing streamflow using complex rating techniques. She also teaches national and international training courses on surface-water and sediment data collection. I have lost track of just how much o...

Dr. David Biedenharn is a river mechanics, subject matter expert, with the Corps of Engineer's Coastal and Hydraulic Laboratory.  He is a professional engineer with over forty years of experience in hydraulics, river engineering, sedimentation, channel restoration, and fluvial geomorphology.  Dr. Biedenharn also teaches in the Tulane Department of Science and Engineering, where he helped deve...

This is a preview of the RSM River Mechanics Podcast, which features conversations about sediment, river processes, and fluvial geomorphology.  The trailer includes excerpts from several of the Season 1 guests. 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. St...