Floodplain Sedimentation Pannel with Desiree Tullos, Janine Castro, and Jon Czuba

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/keGQviqInR0

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/stanfordgibson

If 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