RSM River Mechanics Podcast

RSM River Mechanics Podcast episodes:

• 04.19.2024

  Mary Power on River Ecology, Disturbance, and Inverted Pyramids

  Dr. Power is a food web ecologist at UC Berkeley, where she leads the Power lab which has compiled careful, long term data sets in the Angelo Reserve in Northern CA. In addition to her early work, in Panama and the...

  
• 04.04.2024

  Alain Recking on Sediment Sorting, Transport, and Relative Roughness in Mountain Rivers

  Dr Alain Recking has quantified gravel bed transport with just about all the tools available to our discipline. In addition to substantial field work- Dr. Recking has done some important and influential flume experiments. We have talked and will talk about hiding...

  
• 03.21.2024

  Sediment Modeling Failure Modes and Best Practices with Four Model Developers

  A couple years ago, my agency asked me to write some guidance on sediment modeling, so, I reached out to the morphological modelers I knew, and particularly the model developers who write the morphological model code other people use. I asked...

  
• 03.08.2024

  Tony Thomas on the Origin of Sediment Modeling and Insights from >55 Years of Sediment Studies

  I’ve heard people call Tony the godfather of Sediment Transport Modeling and - as you’ll hear in our conversation - he very well may be the first person to use a computer to answer an engineering scale sediment question. But most...

  
• 02.23.2024

  Jim Selegean and the "Classic Paper Draft"

  Dr. Jim Selegean is the Sediment Transport Specialist at the Corps Detroit District where he studies the rivers and sediment loads into the great lakes as well as inland costal processes.  He is also a professor at Wayne State in...

  
• 02.09.2024

  Astrid Blom on Incision on the Rhine, Gravel-Sand Transitions, and Vertical Bedform Sorting

  Dr. Astrid Blom is a professor Civil Engineering & Geosciences at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands is perhaps best known for her recent reach and rive scale work, modeling hundreds of kilometers, sometimes for hundreds or thousands of...

  
• 01.26.2024

  Marcello Garcia (part 2) on Sedimentation Hazards, the Bulle Effect, and Transport Paradigms

  In the previous episode, we talked to Dr. Marcelo Garcia about the astonishing compilation of sediment science he edited, the ASCE Sedimentation Manual.    In this episode, we turn to some of his work, covering a wide range of topics, but...

  
• 01.20.2024

  Marcelo Garcia Shares Some Sediment Stories and Discusses Manual of Practice 110

  Dr. Marcelo Garcia holds an endowed chair in Hydraulics at the University of Illinois-Urbana – where he has taught for more than thirty years, and runs the remarkable Ven Te Chow hydraulic and sediment laboratory.  His award page reads like a...

  
• 01.03.2024

  David Montgomery on High Gradient River Mechanics (Classification, Incipient Motion, and Wood) and Sediment Impacts on Human History

  Dr. David Montgomery has been so prolific, that for several years I actually thought he was two people: First, Dr. D. Montgomery is a well known geomorphologist from the University of Washington (and a 2008 MacArthur Fellow) whose name is...

  
• 12.20.2023

  Season 3 Preview Episode (with guest excerpts)

  We plan to start releasing season three on the first week of the new year.   It was a fun and helpful season, which I'm looking forward to releasing. This preview overviews the guests and topics of the season with fun pull...

  
• 09.07.2023

  Jennifer Bountry on Dam Removal

  Jennifer Bountry leads the Sedimentation and River Hydraulics Branch of the US Bureau of Reclamation's Technical Service Center in Denver, CO where she helped to coordinate and draft an interagency guidance document on scaling sediment transport analyses to the project...

  
• 08.24.2023

  John Shelley and Paul Boyd on Reservoir Sediment Management in the US

  In the first two episodes of this season Dr. Annandale and Dr. Morris talked about reservoir sediment management practices all over the world.  But examples in the continental US were noticeably absent.   Reservoir sediment management in the US has...

  
• 08.11.2023

  Greg Morris on Reservoir Sediment Management Methods

  Dr. Greg Morris wrote the first text on reservoir sediment management, which generated the categories and set the parameters for a lot of the work and conversations surrounding the topic in the last three decades.  Most of us who work...

  
• 07.28.2023

  George Annandale on the Reservoir Sedimentation Management: Motivations, Economics, and Options

  Dr. George Annandale has been advocating for forward thinking about global water supply for decades...which is more connected to sedimentation processes than you might imagine.  In his book, Quenching the Thirst he makes the case that reservoir sedimentation is one...

  
• 07.23.2023

  Season 2 Trailer: Reservoir Sediment Management Mini-Season

  The RSM River Mechanics Podcast is returning with a summer mini-season on reservoir sediment management.  We recorded four episodes on this topic with some remarkable guests, so we're running them together this summer as a shorter "Season 2" before we...

  
• 03.03.2023

  David Biedenharn on River Mechanics Forensics and His Approach to River Science

  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...

  
• 02.16.2023

  Pablo Espinoza Giron and Pedro David Barrera Crespo on the Generational Erosion Event on the Rio Coca

   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...

  
• 02.03.2023

  Richard Iverson on Debris Flows

  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...

  
• 01.20.2023

  Katie Brutsche on RSM Principles and Practices

  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...

  
• 01.06.2023

  Chris Nygaard on Dam Removal Modeling, Mt Saint Helens Sediment, and Restoration Projects

   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. ...

  
• 01.01.2023

  Bonus Short: SEDHYD is Coming

  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...

  
• 12.22.2022

  John Remus on the "Big Muddy" and the "Sediment Avengers"

   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...

  
• 12.08.2022

  Joanna Curran on Gravel Bed Rivers, Wilcock and Crowe, and Step-Pool Systems

  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...

  
• 11.25.2022

  Ron Copeland on Analytical Channel Design, the Laursen-Copeland Transport Function, and Mississippi Morphology

  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...

  
• 11.10.2022

  Molly Wood on Sediment Data

  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...

  
• 10.28.2022

  David Biedenharn on the Demonstration Project and River Engineering

  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. ...

  
• 10.17.2022

  River Mechanics Podcast Trailer

  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...