EWN - Engineering With Nature

Welcome to the summer feature podcast miniseries—EWN On The Road. As we teased in Episode 5, in this special series, Todd Bridges, Senior Research Scientist for Environmental Science with the US Army Corps of Engineers and the National Lead of the Engineering With Nature® Program, is sharing some highlights of his travels across the country over the past 2 years visiting people, places, and projects relevant to EWN. The miniseries includes 4 episodes and will post August 3, 10, 17 and 24:  

• Episode 1—The San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge: A Natural Landscape Revived
• Episode 2—The San Joaquin Valley: Past, Present, Future and from the Air
• Episode 3—The Heartland Tour: Five Rivers in One Day
• Episode 4—Rivers as Resources to be Valued

  We hope you’ll find these special podcast episodes enlightening and easy listening for your summer travels. You can read more about Todd’s travels and see additional pictures in the EWN On The Road blog on the EWN Website.    In Episode 2, Todd Bridges shares his perspective on the transformation of the wider San Joaquin Valley where he grew up. In December 2021, he took a helicopter tour of the Valley with an eye toward the landscape transformations that are evident. In 1772, Pedro Fages and his company—the first Europeans to visit the San Joaquin Valley—described the valley as filled with a diversity of wildlife and immense lakes and wetlands. The arrival of the Spanish, other Europeans, and eventually the Americans transformed California’s landscape. Dams, reservoirs, levees, canals, pumps, tunnels, and pipelines associated with the major rivers were the tools used to transform the San Joaquin Valley, draining the wetlands and lakes, resulting in a system that is unsustainable. As Todd describes it, “It’s clear to me that today’s and tomorrow’s climate cannot be reconciled with current practices in the valley and its landscape. It’s also clear to me that nature provides a source of hope for the valley’s future. A new balance could be achieved by resurrecting natural features and processes that were ‘engineered out’ of the Valley in the 20th century. Applying the principles and practices of Engineering With Nature could provide the means to realign the social-ecological system for enduring sustainability, water, and social resilience, and to produce the diversity of benefits and values that nature can provide.”   Related Links

• EWN Website
• ERDC Website
• Todd Bridges at EWN
• Todd Bridges at LinkedIn
• EWN On The Road
• EWN On The Road: The California Swing
• EWN On the Road Blog: The California Swing: The San Joaquin Valley: Past, Present and Future from the Air
• EWN On the Road Blog: The California Swing: Engineering Water in California and the Case of the San Joaquin River
• Garden of the Sun: A History of the San Joaquin Valley
• Pedro Fages expeditions to the San Joaquin Valley
• EWN Podcast S3E8: The Dreamt Land – California Water, Sustainability, and EWN
• EWN Podcast S3E9: The Dreamt Land – Rebalancing the System

Welcome to the summer feature podcast miniseries—EWN On The Road. As we teased in Episode 5, in this special series, Todd Bridges, Senior Research Scientist for Environmental Science with the US Army Corps of Engineers and the National Lead of the Engineering With Nature® Program, is sharing some highlights of his travels across the country over the past 2 years visiting people, places, and projects relevant to EWN.    The miniseries includes 4 episodes and will post August 3, 10, 17 and 24:    Episode 1—The San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge: A Natural Landscape Revived Episode 2—The San Joaquin Valley: Past, Present, Future and from the Air  Episode 3—The Heartland Tour: Five Rivers in One Day  Episode 4—Rivers as Resources to be Valued    We hope you’ll find these special podcast episodes enlightening and easy listening for your summer travels. You can read more about Todd’s travels and see additional pictures in the EWN On The Road blog on the EWN Website.  In this epsiode, Todd Bridges talks about his visit to the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge where he observed the effects of restoration efforts and ongoing management of the area by the US Fish and Wildlife Service; the California Department of Water Resources; the US Army Corps of Engineers; and River Partners, a nonprofit engaged in river and riparian restoration in the region. Over the last 15 years, 600,000 native trees have been planted as a part of the restorations. As Todd describes it, “The landscape that is emerging from these efforts is getting close to what I imagine Pedro Fages and his companions saw as they became the first Europeans to venture into the San Joaquin Valley in 1772.” Aligning natural and engineering processes produces a host of environmental, social, and economic benefits for flood risk management. “My visit to the Refuge has inspired me to think about how Engineering With Nature could support scaling-up restoration and nature-based solutions across the San Joaquin Valley and the nation to achieve a balance between humans and nature on our shared landscapes.” Related Links EWN Website ERDC Website Todd Bridges at EWN Todd Bridges at LinkedIn EWN On The Road EWN On The Road: The California Swing San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge San Joaquin River Restoration Program USFWS San Joaquin River Restoration Program River Partners San Joaquin River NWR CA DFW San Joaquin River Restoration Program EWN Podcast S2E7: EWN Collaboration with the California Department of Water Resources USACE Lower San Joaquin River Project

Leadership and vision are essential to implementing Engineering With Nature to create landscape-scale climate resilience. We’re focusing on leadership and EWN in conversations with two inspirational USACE Division leaders – Colonel (P) Antoinette Gant, Commander, and Division Engineer of the South Pacific Division (SPD), and Brigadier General Jason Kelly, Commander of the South Atlantic Division (SAD).    In Episode 7, Host Sarah Thorne and Todd Bridges, Senior Research Scientist for Environmental Science with the US Army Corps of Engineers and the National Lead of the Engineering With Nature® Program are talking with BG Kelly about the challenges facing the South Atlantic Division. From restoration in the Everglades, to deepening the Charleston Harbor, to ongoing flood control initiatives, to disaster preparedness, we’re talking about the leadership needed to address landscape-scale challenges in innovative ways and how Engineering With Nature is an important part of infrastructure solutions.    With an education in mathematics and statistics from Georgia Tech, BG Kelly spent the first 20 years of his career as “time in a formation with a rifle and a pistol” leading men and women as soldiers. When he took command of the Norfolk District in 2015, he was unsure if he would be as excited about navigation, recreation, aquatic ecosystem restoration, and regulatory permitting as he had been about preparing soldiers for combat, but he found that he was: “I'm curious by nature, so, this job certainly fits the bill. I come into work every day and have the opportunity to engage subject matter experts, folks that know more—have forgotten more—than I'll learn during my tenure as the Division Commander in SAD. We're all committed. We're all trying to deliver for the nation.” He is driven by curiosity, a desire to collaborate, and a personal quest to become a better communicator: “I strive to better communicate as an ambassador for the great work that's happening in my organization. I'm excited about what we're doing.”   The South Atlantic Division faces many challenges—and opportunities—from hurricanes and impacts from climate change, to moving populations, and a range of issues related to aging infrastructure. The USACE is leading innovation to deliver 21st century engineering and infrastructure solutions that leverage EWN to solve problems and create value. From BG Kelly’s perspective, leadership is critical: “I think it's important that the senior most members of our organization lean in. As the senior leader in the South Atlantic Division, I am afforded the opportunity to know the EWN solutions that are available, but that's not always the case for some of the practitioners in the districts. I think it's important that the senior-most leaders get active, specifically with my position as a Major Subordinate Commander, sitting at the nexus of execution in the districts and policy in Washington, DC – rules and tools – trying to make all of that come together so we can do some collateral good. I don't think it happens without that nudge from leaders. Leadership matters.”   Todd agrees: “Hearing leaders talk about, communicate, and message about EWN and innovative approaches, is so important for the vertical team within the Corps, but also to our sponsors and stakeholders and those that we're building things for. They need to hear us talk about what we're trying to do and how we're going to achieve it.”   BG Kelly notes that strengthening communication is being strongly promoted by the Honorable Michael Connor, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works as one of his ‘lines of effort’, along with other factors that directly relate to EWN: “His insistence that we strengthen communications and relationships to solve water resource challenges, is front and center. I try to do that from my perch in Atlanta. His insistence that we modernize our Civil Works programs to better serve the needs of disadvantaged communities means ‘full contact.’ We’ve got to get out and be talking and be active to understand people’s needs. His ask that we build innovative climate resilient infrastructure to protect communities and ecosystems brings us right into this space of EWN and incorporating natural and nature-based features. Figuring out how to make these priorities part of all that we're doing is something I'm excited about. Those lines of effort are from our most senior leaders. And they are essential to solving the water resource challenges faced by the USACE.”    SAD’s Civil Works program is diverse. It includes commercial navigation, flood and storm damage risk reduction, and ecosystem restoration for ports, navigation channels, and waterways in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. As BG Kelly notes, “These are places that are critical to our economy, places that are consistently and persistently in the news. Everything we do matters.” He relates a string of challenges, from disaster response in Puerto Rico to Everglades Restoration, to the rebuilding of Tyndall Air Force Base (see EWN Podcast S1E3), to projects in the ports of Savannah, Mobile, Charleston, and Miami, in response to climate change and resilience. “It's an exciting time. We have some complex challenges, and we've got talented folks. Each day, I say thank you for our success—we're winning. But when I say thank you, I'm asking for more. I've got another problem that I need my team to take on. For me, the reality is that we've got more work than time, and time is absolutely not on our side. But I'll tell you, SAD is game.”   As Todd notes, “The Division is waging a different kind of battle that is relevant to our discussion of EWN—from the 20th century engineering approach of trying to conquer nature, to now trying to embrace nature—essentially partnering with nature—by applying EWN principles and natural and nature-based solutions to create infrastructure solutions that enhance community resilience and diversify value. BG Kelly agrees: “I think we've got to reframe our thinking to solve these complex challenges—think about how we can, and quite frankly, should be partnering with nature. One of the things I struggle with is our plan formulation. Our processes don't always lend themselves to that solution set. I think what Mr. Connor has asked us to do in modernizing our Civil Works program is to figure out how to make sure we're valuing these solutions. We have to think through cost sharing requirements for non-structural natural and nature-based features that would encourage communities to do some things differently. It will also encourage our engineers to think about those solutions in a different way.”   Project decision making in USACE is changing. As BG Kelly notes, “I've engaged key stakeholders to alert them that the Army Corps of Engineers is not wedded to only concrete and steel. As a leader I'm trying to telegraph my thinking that we’re going to make the decisions that consider natural and nature-based features—ways that we partner with nature. Everything is on the table to solve the challenge.” Todd adds that the USACE Chief of Engineers, Lieutenant General Spellmon, uses an image of the USACE logo as a Castle where the drawbridge is down and the windows are open: “I think that imagery is so good because we need to open up as an organization so that we can co-develop solutions with our partners and with our communities. Some of us are going to be interested in the numbers and the math, and some of us are going to be interested in the bugs and the bunnies. But we can come together in an open process of co-developing solutions.” BG Kelly agrees, noting the diverse group of stakeholders who are impacted by Corps’ decisions: “Collaboration is a very key ingredient. We're talking about America's water resources, rivers, wetlands, inland and coastal waterways and billions of dollars in recreation and commerce. I think you have to let everyone under the tent and when we are making decisions, when we're trying to think about these competing alternatives. I'm an advocate for all things being considered and letting that be our point of origin as we move forward. With this approach, I think we'll get some good outcomes.”   Todd agrees: “It's a positive time within the Corps, with LTG Spellmon and Mr. Connor's leadership, and yours, BG Kelly. With the organization, the potential, and the strong program the Corps has, we must embrace the idea of delivering projects and innovating at the same time to be the organization that we need to be today, as well as in the future.” A great example is the South Atlantic Coastal Study. It is the largest coastal risk assessment ever conducted by the Corps. According to BG Kelly, it covers more than 60,000 miles of shoreline, six states, and two territories: “It's just a mammoth undertaking and a great example of our goal to maximize the use of research and development, while promoting community resilience through partnering. It’s a great illustration of our effort to overcome those institutional barriers that I mentioned and adapt to climate change and sea level rise in our quest to better partner with nature.”  Leadership is critical, and it is evolving. As Todd concludes, “BG Kelly, you're bringing people with you, you're not directing them. As you know, you don't really get effective change through exceptional force. You’re describing a kind of social leadership. That's what we need to make progress as the Corps of Engineers, and progress with our partners, for the benefit of our communities. I think the future of Engineering With Nature in the South Atlantic Division is bright, bright, bright

Leadership and vision are essential to implementing Engineering With Nature to create landscape-scale climate resilience. We’re focusing on leadership and EWN in conversations with two inspirational USACE Division leaders – Colonel (P) Antoinette Gant, Commander, and Division Engineer of the South Pacific Division (SPD), and Brigadier General Jason Kelly, Commander of the South Atlantic Division (SAD). In Episode 6, Host Sarah Thorne, and Todd Bridges, Senior Research Scientist for Environmental Science with the US Army Corps of Engineers and the National Lead of the Engineering With Nature® Program are talking with COL Gant about the challenges and opportunities facing the South Pacific Division, and how EWN and leadership are being applied to meet those needs. COL Gant grew up as the child of two teachers with the dream of being a chemist, until she met Patricia Sullivan, one of her mother’s students and a USACE employee, who introduced her to civil engineering. “It was just mind blowing to me what you could do as a civil engineer, the impacts that you could actually have on your community, and how you could change things. My mother always told me, ‘be the change you want to see.’ So, I decided that I would try my hand at civil engineering.” COL Gant joined the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) as a way to pay for college and has served in the Army for 28 years. She has risen through the ranks and is slated to be promoted to Brigadier General soon. One of the ways she pays it forward is by being a strong advocate for STEM/STEAM—Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics—and speaking to young people about her journey whenever she has the opportunity. COL Gant leads the South Pacific Division, which covers a lot of territory—Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Albuquerque Districts—and has a diverse and complex set of missions and projects. As Todd notes: “The challenges—and opportunities—that we face today with respect to climate change are unprecedented and there are few places where this is more evident than in the West, where people have brought significant changes to the landscape (for example see EWN Podcast S3E8 about changes in agriculture and water use in California). COL Gant agrees: “I always say climate change is real. The rate of change is really accelerating. Where we used to see a hurricane every once in a while, we're seeing them almost every year. Wildfires are the same. How do you prepare differently for the same wildfire, the rising tides? These are all things that we are looking to design and implement, adaptive and equitable solutions that will work over time, and work for everyone.” As we learn in our conversation, environmental justice plays a prominent role in COL Gant’s thinking about these challenges and in her decision making about solutions. We discuss how EWN provides solutions that can produce a broader array of benefits than traditional engineering approaches, while supporting opportunities for substantive engagement with communities, including vulnerable populations and under-represented communities. As Todd explains, infrastructure must be a source of service and benefit to our communities: “What we're seeking to do with EWN is to diversify that benefit. So, when we make an investment in infrastructure—say a flood risk management project in a river that runs through a community like the Guadalupe River in San Jose—we are intentional, purposeful, about looking for opportunities to diversify the value that can be created for that community in that project.” He adds, “there's so much evidence emerging in the scientific literature showing how important access to nature is, in particular for marginalized or disadvantaged communities.” COL Gant agrees. Under her command, the South Pacific Division is taking a strong leadership role: “We're making a commitment to be the first Division that is a Proving Ground for Engineering With Nature. We're working with our Districts to be on the forefront of incorporating EWN and environmental justice principles in everything that we do. It’s not just an afterthought. It's something that is incorporated from the beginning.” She explains that this means changing the way SPD does business and changing the way SPD staff work with partners, like the California Department of Water Resources (see S2E7 on working with the CA DWR), and other states and communities to build the relationships needed to produce dynamic teams that solve problems in new and innovative ways. These efforts are being recognized by top USACE leaders and COL Gant says she is getting a lot of support from other leaderships in USACE: “That's one of the positives today. USACE—in support of the Administration’s initiatives—understands that projects can't just be about a benefit ratio number. We have to look at the other items of benefit that a project brings to a community, then say ‘yes, these are the type of projects that we need to do.’” She notes that recently, the USACE’s Chief of Engineers, Lieutenant General Spellmon, toured projects in the San Francisco District. District staff were able to show him the benefits of EWN, for example, how flood risk management projects can provide opportunities for recreation, biking and walking in nature. COL Gant relayed LTG Spellmon’s enthusiasm for EWN after seeing the benefits of the approach first-hand, “He said: ‘You guys already are out here doing these things. We've got to figure out how to get everybody else to see how this is actually working—creating environments where people are willing to lean on each other, where they're willing to learn, where they're willing to think outside the box.’” Todd agrees, underscoring the importance of COL Gant and the Division’s leadership on EWN: “I'm so grateful and excited about the leadership that COL Gant and her team are taking on, owning EWN. As you listen to COL Gant talk about it—and her team members too—there's such a maturity in SPD in terms of what is involved in leading this kind of transformation and innovation and practice. It's clear to us that when you're doing something important and fundamental and substantive like this, you don't do it by yourself. You do it with others and partnership is the key to being able to fully realize the power and benefit that can be achieved from EWN. I look so forward to engaging and supporting the South Pacific Division in any way that we can. It's such an important opportunity and, under COL Gant’s command, they're poised to do great things.” Related Links

• EWN Website
• ERDC Website
• Todd Bridges at EWN
• Todd Bridges at LinkedIn
• COL Gant at USACE South Pacific Division
• COL Gant at LinkedIn
• USACE South Pacific Division

• Patricia Sullivan – Associate Director ERDC
• Ginkgo Bioworks Cultivate Fellowship: Growing the Black STEM Community
• Upper Guadalupe River Flood Risk Management Project
• South San Francisco Bay Project
• California Department of Water Resources

• EWN Podcast S2E7: EWN Collaboration with the California Department of Water Resources
• EWN Podcast S3E8: The Dreamt Land – California Water, Sustainability, and EWN

We’re really excited about our upcoming episodes 6 and 7.  Tune in July 20th as we discuss leadership and Engineering With Nature with two inspirational USACE Division leaders – Colonel (P) Antoinette Gant, Commander, and Division Engineer of the South Pacific Division (SPD), and Brigadier General Jason Kelly, Commander of the South Atlantic Division (SAD).   Leadership and vision are essential to successfully incorporating Engineering With Nature and nature-based approaches into climate preparedness and resilience solutions to address landscape-scale challenges. In Episodes 6 & 7, Host Sarah Thorne and Todd Bridges, Senior Research Scientist for Environmental Science with the US Army Corps of Engineers and the National Lead of the Engineering With Nature® Program talk with COL Gant and BG Kelly about the some of the challenges facing their Divisions, how Engineering With Nature approaches are a key part of the solutions, and about the leadership needed to address landscape-scale challenges in innovative ways.   Stimulating, thought-provoking and truly inspiring!! The future of EWN is bright.

Welcome to Episode 5! Today we’re kicking off the summer season with a road trip! Host Sarah Thorne is joined by Todd Bridges, Senior Research Scientist for Environmental Science with the US Army Corps of Engineers and the National Lead of the Engineering With Nature® Program to talk about a new podcast mini-series. Over the past 2 years, Todd has been traveling across the country to visit people, places, and projects and he’s been reflecting on his experiences by writing a travel blog. We’re bringing highlights from the EWN On The Road blog to a podcast format—easy listening for summer travelers! In the summer of 2021, Todd and his wife and the unofficial EWN driver, Anita, traveled across 14 states from Mississippi to Montana and back in what Todd calls the Heartland Tour. “It was mind-altering for me,” Todd says. “It’s so important to me, and I think to most of us, to put ourselves in places and in contexts to stimulate our minds, our creativity, and our thinking. Over the course of a month and 5,547 miles, it just changed the way I thought about the land, the landscape, nature, the relationship of people to nature, what we’ve done in the past collectively to nature, and what we need to do to remedy our relationship with nature.” During the trip, Todd was posting his thoughts and observations to the EWN On The Road page on the EWN website. “I’ve had the opportunity, really the blessing, professionally to have traveled extensively, not only across the United States, but in other countries around the world, to see projects incorporating nature-based solutions and natural infrastructure—what we talk about as Engineering With Nature—in a whole variety of places and to talk with the people who made those projects happen. I became increasingly convinced that I needed to share those experiences with others so, in a sense, they can also participate in those experiences and that learning that I was able to engage in by being there and having my feet on the ground or in the water and seeing those projects.” Todd describes how he was struck by the vast agricultural landscapes and the relationships between the land, the communities, and the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. And he appreciated the opportunity to visit with USACE colleagues, including Eddie Brauer (St. Louis District, Heartland Tour Stop #3) and David Crane (Omaha District, Heartland Tour Stop #6) the two USACE Riverine EWN Practice Leads, whose work and projects represent the future of sustainable infrastructure development. In the winter of 2022, Todd and Anita headed out on the Southwest Swing, traveling nearly 8,000 miles through 8 states to visit more people, places, and projects, including Hoover Dam and Lake Mead, which is at its lowest level in its history, an alarming indication of the megadrought that has gripped the Southwest. Its current water level is at 35% capacity, for a reservoir that supports 40 million people. Lake Powell upstream on the Colorado River is also at a historic low. A paper recently published in the journal Nature Climate Change highlights that this is the most intense drought in the region in 1200 years. Todd notes, “The need is intense to make use of new ways—natural infrastructure—to address the cycles of drought and flooding that occur in the Southwest.” The California Swing in 2021 and continuing in 2022 makes a personal connection for Todd who was born and raised in the San Joaquin Valley of California. As discussed on previous EWN Podcast episodes S3E8 and S3E9 with author Mark Arax, the water infrastructure story of California, as Todd notes, “is complex and impressive on any scale. It is the most complex water engineering of any place in the world and has created the $50 billion California agricultural powerhouse.” With that comes unprecedented challenges—social, environmental, and economic. Todd delves into these challenges and associated opportunities in upcoming EWN On The Road podcasts. During this summer’s EWN On The Road podcast mini-series Todd reflects on his 13,000 miles of travel across the country: “Maybe during this holiday time over the summer, listeners will be stimulated to think beyond the interstate—get off road and think about what they see and their relationship personally, or collectively with their community, with nature and how improving that can serve the greater good.” Related Links EWN Website ERDC Website Todd Bridges at EWN Todd Bridges at LinkedIn EWN On The Road EWN On The Road: The Heartland Tour EWN On The Road: The California Swing EWN Implementation Cadre Rapid intensification of the emerging southwestern North American megadrought in 2020–2021 – Nature Climate Change Journal EWN Podcast S2E7: EWN Collaboration with the California Department of Water Resources EWN Podcast S3E8: The Dreamt Land – California Water, Sustainability, and EWN EWN Podcast S3E9: The Dreamt Land – Rebalancing the System EWN Podcast S4E2: High Energy Roundtable with the EWN Practice Leads

Welcome to Episode 4! We’re discussing the role of EWN and nature-based solutions (NBS) in addressing urban challenges to build community and regional resilience. Host Sarah Thorne is joined by new co-host, Burton Suedel, Research Biologist at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE); Abby Hall, Senior Advisor on Local and Regional Planning, with the Office of Community Revitalization, at the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA); and Jim McPherson, Federal Coordinating Officer for Region 1, with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).   Jim has had a long career in disaster response, first with the U.S. Coast Guard, where he participated in the response to Hurricane Katrina, now a Federal Coordinating Officer with FEMA. Jim’s current role is coordinating all federal agencies in a disaster, including USACE: “One of my favorite agencies to work with is the US Army Corps of Engineers because they are the nation's toolbox. They can do anything.”   Abby grew up in rural Oklahoma as a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and studied anthropology at Stanford University. Her environmental education work at the EPA focused on helping people gain more access to green space in their day-to-day lives, whether it be big city parks, urban trees, community gardens, or creek trails. This led to her focus on green infrastructure for disaster resilience: “Resilience is a community's ability to survive disasters and to be ready for the impacts of climate change, protecting public health, delivering environmental justice, preserving a culture, strengthening the local economy, for long-term success of the community overall, not just in the context of natural disasters.”   The EWN Program has a relatively new focus on urban landscapes and the environment.  As Burton notes, “EWN has funded a research task specifically looking at how EWN concepts and principles have been and could be incorporated into urban settings and landscapes. There are multiple challenges at the urban level. We're thinking about managing flood and storm risk. We want to improve the ecosystem functions associated with community infrastructure. And we also want to improve the water quality and flood protection in these areas and by so doing, improve the public health and social benefits.”   The focus of EPA’s Greening America’s Communities Program is similar. Abby says, “It's one of my favorite things I get to work on at EPA. It's a design assistance program for communities where EPA and a team of landscape architects and urban designers come to a community and hold workshops with a range of local perspectives to put together a vision for what green infrastructure solutions should literally look like. We're talking to the school kids who need a green street to walk from home to school. We're talking to the farmers who need a space in town to create a farmers’ market. We’re really bringing together different perspectives to design that green infrastructure and people love the approach because it's fun, it's engaging and it's visual. Whether it's a city or a tribal community, they can use the pictures created to fundraise and actually get their designs built.”   The EPA, working with FEMA and a regional land use agency in the San Francisco Bay area, developed the Regional Resilience Toolkit to help regions and communities to become more resilient. It presents a 5-step process to bring together government and non-government regional partners to produce the top priorities for resilience investments across a region to plan, fund and build large-scale green infrastructure. The process meets FEMA’s requirements for its hazard mitigation planning program, which means the priority action is eligible for FEMA funding.  And as Burton notes, “The Toolkit is a really good enabler, not only for the EPA, but as a way to collaborate with USACE and others looking for increased inter-agency collaboration, and perhaps for conducting pilot projects and other projects going forward.”   Jim emphasizes the importance of these approaches being actionable. “It's very important that we do these studies, but it's more important that we have an action plan. FEMA is really results-driven. We're action-orientated we don't just want to pass information.” As an example, Jim describes a coordinated response to homelessness in Hartford, Connecticut: “FEMA was putting everybody into a hotel during COVID, but people weren't getting any services, they were basically just housed. Then we got together with fed, states, locals, our USACE Lead Field Coordinator, and she starts looking at all the types of things that we could bring into this hotel -- organic gardening, vertical gardening, having residents compost leftover food from local restaurants, putting solar panels on the roof and having some who are formerly homeless people get training. Now we’re using all the wraparound services from the federal, state, and local governments. When we talk about vulnerable populations, there has to be a solution. It can't just be identifying that we have a housing, a homeless situation. What am I going to do about it?”   Taking a holistic approach to building community resilience is a key theme of this episode.  Abby comments that, “EPA’s Equitable Resilience Assistance Program reflects a priority across the federal government to look at how equitable our programs and funding are. We're working with states and tribes, focusing on large funding streams, starting at federal sources and flowing through states and tribal governments, and how can those be more thoughtfully distributed.”     As the episode wraps up, Burton emphasizes the growing need to renew existing infrastructure, relating how the concrete and steel structures constructed over the past 100 years must be modified, repaired, or replaced. “When we replace this infrastructure, we need to think about ways we can increase the value associated with it, going beyond intended engineering objectives, to include environmental, social, and economic benefits. One of the best ways to do that is to incorporate nature-based solutions into these projects to provide greater benefits.”      Collaborating with agency partners to bring a full slate of expertise and resources to address multiple challenges at the community level is really the key to building resilience.   Related Links

• EWN Website
• ERDC Website
• Burton Suedel at LinkedIn
• Burton Suedel at EWN

 

• Abby Hall at LinkedIn
• Smart Growth at EPA
• EPA Community Revitalization on Facebook
• EPA's Greening America's Communities Program
• Reports from Greening America's Communities Projects
• Greening America's Capitals – Little Rock, Arkansas
• EPA's Regional Resilience Toolkit
• MMSD 2019 Resilience Plan - A Blueprint for the Future
• EPA’s Equitable Resilience Assistance Program

 

• Jim McPherson at LinkedIn
• FEMA Region 1
• Hurricane Katrina
• Hartford Courant – Former hotel in Hartford’s South Meadows to become new emergency shelter for men

In https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/high-energy-roundtable-with-the-ewn-practice-leads/id1528233207?i=1000562006094 we had a high energy roundtable with the EWN Practice Leads who play a critical role in broadening and expanding the application of Engineering With Nature practices and nature-based solutions within the US Army Corps of Engineers. In Episode 3, the EWN Practice Leads return to talk about how they’re solving challenges, advancing EWN implementation through the https://ewn.erdc.dren.mil/?page_id=2871, and sharing what they are learning with other practitioners.   Host Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, Deputy Lead of the Engineering With Nature Program at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), are joined again by a roundtable of the EWN Practice Leads. Elizabeth Godsey is the Technical Lead for Coastal Engineering and Regional Sediment Management with Mobile District; Danielle Szimanski is a Project Manager and Ecologist with Baltimore District; Eddie Brauer is a Senior Hydraulic Engineer with St. Louis District; and Dave Crane is an Environmental Resource Specialist with Omaha District. We asked each to talk about their current projects.   Danielle, a Coastal Practice Lead, describes her work in the Chesapeake Bay where rising sea level is already occurring and is expected to increase. She and her team are restoring barrier islands and marshes to combat the loss of habitat and for flood risk management of inland areas. “Being able to restore these marshes, especially if they're degraded and fragmented, and being able to stave off that future loss and stop them from turning into open water is critical for the Chesapeake Bay.” Danielle also discusses work underway at Deal Island: “The Deal Island project is a maintenance dredging project on the Wicomico River. We're going to use the dredge material to restore approximately 70 acres of degraded and fragmented marsh. This will restore that wetland for migratory birds, and provide nesting habitat specifically for the Saltmarsh Sparrow, which is a threatened species.” She adds, “there's been a lot of work with other federal, state and non-government agencies to create this design and complete pre- and post-monitoring to assess how these wetlands are actually going to provide habitat once they are created.”   Elizabeth, also a Coastal Practice Lead, has worked on a number of coastal restoration projects in the Gulf to restore habitats for threatened and endangered species including sea turtles and piping plovers: “In Mississippi alone we've restored over 2,500 acres across the coastal zone habitats, including beach, dune, wetlands, and island restoration. That's about 2000 football fields of restoration work in that state alone.” She’s taking that first-hand knowledge and experience and, as a Practice Lead, sharing leading practices and key learnings with others: “The biggest thing that we're doing is our monitoring and adaptive management. It's a long-term look at the project performance and the ecological benefits that come from the projects. We give that back to scientists, to universities, to people at the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), and the US Geological Survey (USGS) so they can improve their modeling tools and reduce uncertainty in their predictions.” She also stresses the importance of combining multiple benefits to help achieve whatever the mission goal is, whether it is storm risk management, navigation and economic benefit, or ecosystem protection and restoration: “We're able to integrate each of those benefits and provide that value-add to the nation. We’re getting that message out and showing people how to do that, and how you communicate the benefits of this approach to decision-makers.”   Turning to the Riverine Practice Leads, Eddie describes the importance of taking a holistic perspective of riverine systems. “There are so many people that have a day-to-day connection to the river beyond just the projects that the Corps is doing. It's our responsibility to ensure that we account for everyone's needs on all the projects that we construct. To do that, it's critical to understand that each project is part of a broader system.” He goes on to describe a project that the Corps participated in on the Madeira River in Brazil, the largest tributary of the Amazon River and a critical navigation corridor for transporting goods and people. “It was extra critical for us to be to take a watershed approach, to understand the system before doing anything. We spent four years studying the system prior to making a single recommendation. Through this analysis, we understood that because of the geology of the river, we were able to manage it in smaller reaches instead of very large engineering projects, similar to what you'd see on the Missouri or the Mississippi Rivers. We were able to nudge the river through potentially temporary river training structures and spark natural geomorphic processes to accomplish our goals, as opposed to using a brute force engineering approach.”   Dave is working on a project on a 12-mile stretch of the Platte River that runs through the city and county of Denver where the Corps had built dams in the past. By rethinking the approach and applying EWN principles, he and his team are achieving multiple benefits: “We’re doing things like completely removing or modifying drop structures in the river that allow for better fish passage and better in-channel habitat, while also helping to reduce sedimentation the channel. In some areas we're able to pull back the riverbanks to allow more flood water conveyance capacity. Working within an urban area, that has a very direct and large connection to a much larger landscape, laterally and upstream and downstream.”   Working together, the four Practice Leads have learned from each other and developed shared priorities. As Elizabeth notes: “Connecting practitioners of different backgrounds like us with this overarching vision of Engineering With Nature was the thing that really made it easy for us to figure out our group's strengths and differences; how we could come together and work, and also what those priorities needed to be, because we could find those common grounds across the landscape.”   One of their top priorities was expand the practice of EWN across the Corps. In 2021 the Practice Leads established the EWN Implementation Cadre. As Dave explains, “It’s an informal internal network of EWN and natural and nature-based features practitioners. We have a space where we connect and share experiences, knowledge, ideas, upload documents to a shared drive and have discussions online.” Danielle describes the process of sharing that goes on across the Cadre: “The key word that we were looking for, for the Cadre hub was ‘crowdsourcing’. Project managers from anywhere in the country that have become a member of this hub can pose a question to the entire group, the multiple hundreds of Cadre members.” As Eddie notes, in addition to leveraging resources and connections, the Cadre provides an opportunity to bring new ideas into the Corps.   According to Jeff, the Cadre as an unqualified success: “When the Cadre was launched, the Leads invited anyone within the Corps who was interested in learning more about the EWN Cadre to attend their opening webinar – 800 Corps employees participated in that first meeting! And the interest has continued. It's just been incredible to see the number of people coming to this space, wanting to learn more about Engineering With Nature, offering their thoughts, and their questions. Creating this repository of information has become so valuable. It's a special place and just a real testimony to the hard work that the Practice Leads are doing.”   Related Links
- https://ewn.erdc.dren.mil/
- http://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-king-85195413
- https://ewn.erdc.dren.mil/?page_id=494
 
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-godsey-p-e-b85793a8/
- https://ewn.erdc.dren.mil/?page_id=4136
- https://www.sam.usace.army.mil/Missions/Program-and-Project-Management/Civil-Projects/MsCIP/
- https://www.nps.gov/guis/planyourvisit/ship-island.htm
- https://www.nps.gov/guis/planyourvisit/cat-island.htm
- https://erdc-library.erdc.dren.mil/jspui/bitstream/11681/3706/1/ERDC-TN-EWN-15-2.pdf
- https://www.sam.usace.army.mil/Portals/46/docs/program_management/mscip/docs/AppS%20-%20MAM%20Plan%20with%20appedices.pdf and Adaptive Management
- https://cesamusace.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=ea29cd4e1f3b432e8c520df3fb7a9f8b-Dauphin Island
 
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-szimanski-74892821a/

Welcome to Episode 2 of Season 4! EWN Practice Leads play a critical role in broadening and expanding the application of Engineering With Nature practices and nature-based solutions. Host Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, Deputy Lead of the Engineering With Nature Program at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), are joined by a roundtable of EWN Practice Leads who are all with USACE. Elizabeth Godsey is the Technical Lead for Coastal Engineering and Regional Sediment Management with Mobile District; Danielle Szimanski is a Project Manager and Ecologist with Baltimore District; Edward Brauer is a Senior Hydraulic Engineer with St. Louis District; and David Crane is an Environmental Resource Specialist with Omaha District.   Consistent with this season’s theme—Up, Up, Up, with Engineering With Nature—EWN Practice Leads were established to enable the continued expansion of EWN. According to Jeff, “Back in March of 2021, we were experiencing a lot of growth within the EWN Program, and we realized that for this growth to continue, we really needed to reach beyond this national-level program and get out into the field more. We strived to identify individuals who would help us grow the program so, we put out a call internal to the Corps. Eddie, Elizabeth, Danielle, and Dave stepped up and answered the call. It’s been really exciting working with all four of them.”   The Leads had various levels of experience with EWN, but all were motivated by an opportunity to help expand the application of EWN principles and practices throughout the Corps by acting as the connection between the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), and the districts. Elizabeth called it an “aha moment,” describing it as “a leadership opportunity to be a mentor and to connect other practitioners with cutting-edge science and engineering with nature solutions.” Danielle was excited about signing on: “I love the idea of sharing opportunities for EWN with others that haven’t had that experience before—being able to put EWN at the forefront and show that even if you haven’t done it before, you don’t need to be afraid of it.”     As Jeff says, it’s a two-way opportunity: “For me sitting at a higher level, I do engage with the Corps’s districts quite a bit, but there’s an opportunity to learn more about what’s happening on the ground. The Practice Leads provide incredible insight that helps EWN leadership really get the full picture of what is happening in the districts and where future opportunities are located. All four Leads are dedicated, motivated, and really inspire us to do more.”   The Practice Leads lead the https://ewn.erdc.dren.mil/?page_id=2871—an informal network of US Army Corps of Engineers practitioners, representing a variety of disciplines across the enterprise, that is working to advance the application of EWN principles, practices, and technologies to deliver nature-based solutions (which will be discussed in more detail in Episode 3). The Leads represent two practice areas—Coastal and Riverine. We discuss their experiences applying EWN in their districts and share how EWN approaches, including large, landscape-scale nature-based features, can be translated to other practitioners.   Elizabeth, a Coastal Practice Lead, describes the challenges Mobile District is facing along the Northern Gulf of Mexico coast associated with tropical storms, heavy rainfall, and rising seas: “Those coastal hazards can increase the stressors to our natural and manmade systems that serve as a frontline of defense and increase the risk to our growing coastal populations, critical infrastructure, as well as nationally significant habitats and species. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Congress authorized the Mississippi Coastal Improvements Program to address long-term risk reduction. An element of this was to restore offshore Mississippi barrier islands. This resulted with estimated annual storm-damage-reduction benefits of over $20 million to the mainland coast.” These were also discussed in https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/expanding-engineering-with-nature/id1528233207?i=1000513320370.   Danielle, a Coastal Practice Lead, describes work being doing in the Chesapeake Bay on the https://ewn.erdc.dren.mil/?p=6547 that has been mentioned in previous podcast episodes (https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/collaborating-to-create-wildlife-habitat-while-restoring/id1528233207?i=1000492118642 and https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/scaling-up-up-up-with-cstorm-and-ewn/id1528233207?i=1000559504626). The Swan Island restoration is intended to work as a natural breakwater against storm impacts to protect coastal areas by using dredged material to increase elevation, along with vegetation (on shore and submerged). The data gathered is being used to improve modeling. “There’s been a lot of work across agencies to be able to combine all this information together for the https://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/Media/Fact-Sheets/Fact-Sheet-Article-View/Article/476697/coastal-storm-modeling-system/ model so we can use it, not just in the Chesapeake Bay but across the nation for other island restoration projects, to be able to reduce these storm impacts.” A couple of articles about the model have already been published; and once finalized, the model will be available for anyone to use. The hope is that it will enable completion of more natural breakwater projects by the Corps. As Jeff notes, sharing how EWN is being applied in the districts is important as it serves as a model for other districts.   Eddie, a Riverine Practice Lead, describes some of the challenges St. Louis District faces in its riverine systems, which he notes have been engineered for decades. “We're having to go back and reimagine the way that we’re implementing solutions, finding other ways that we can, for instance, have navigation on a system but also create additional habitat without increasing flood risk. It’s really important to understand that there are many people with diverse needs out there that we need to accommodate. The solution to both of these problems are Engineering With Nature fundamentals—looking at this as a system and incorporating other people’s benefits and needs and partnerships.”   Dave, a Riverine Practice Lead, has been doing innovative work in Omaha District: “It’s been neat finding ways to incorporate nature-based features, not only in ecosystem restoration projects but across the full spectrum of our mission.” He adds, “There’s a lot of talk about aging infrastructure throughout the country. Maybe levees aren’t something that a lot of people think about when they think about aging infrastructure, but some flood risk management infrastructure, including levees, are almost a hundred years old. In large rural areas along the Missouri River, they’ve been damaged by floods and been repaired in place. Over time, it takes a toll. As we repair flood risk management infrastructure, we’re partnering with conservation programs and NGOs and thinking differently about constructing things like setbacks. These can help address ecosystem restoration while improving the infrastructure because you’re able to rebuild to modern levee design standards that are more resilient and can withstand over topping without as much erosion damage.”   As we close, Jeff highlights the value of the EWN Practice Leads: “This group of Practice Leads are creating real boots-on-the-ground projects and they’re expanding the practice of EWN in their own work, while also being leaders, coaches, and mentors for others that they work with on a regular basis.” Sarah and Jeff invite the Leads to return for Season 4 Episode 3 to talk about how they’re solving challenges, advancing EWN implementation through the EWN Cadre, and sharing what they are learning with other practitioners.   Related Links
- https://ewn.erdc.dren.mil/
- http://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-king-85195413
- https://ewn.erdc.dren.mil/?page_id=494
 
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-godsey-p-e-b85793a8/
- https://ewn.erdc.dren.mil/?page_id=4136
- https://www.sam.usace.army.mil/Missions/Program-and-Project-Management/Civil-Projects/MsCIP/
   
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-szimanski-74892821a/
- https://ewn.erdc.dren.mil/?page_id=4141
- https://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/Media/Fact-Sheets/Fact-Sheet-Article-View/Article/476697/coastal-storm-modeling-system/
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Welcome to the first episode of Season 4! Our theme is Up, Up, Up, with Nature-Based Solutions and we have a fabulous line-up of guests who are going to join us and talk about the climate change imperative – and the opportunity to collaborate on developing and implementing landscape-scale projects.   Host Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, Deputy Lead of the Engineering With Nature Program at the US Army Corps of Engineers, are joined by two guests. Amanda Tritinger is the Assistant Program Manager for the EWN Program, and a Research Hydraulics Engineer at the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Amanda is also a future cohost of the EWN Podcast. Matt Bilskie is Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia. Matt leads the http://coast.engr.uga.edu, a research team that develops computational hydrodynamic models to simulate astronomic tides, wind-waves, storm surge, and rainfall-runoff in coastal and oceanic environments. They are talking about how their work on innovative modeling will help project teams incorporate nature-based features into their coastal storm planning efforts.   Amanda and Matt met at the University of Central Florida and share a passion for applying math and science to make the world a better place by helping coastal communities thrive. As part of her education, Amanda used numerical models to predict erosion and accretion in marsh environments in a national estuarine research reserve. In the process, she fell in love with the coast, which led to her PhD and ultimately her work with USACE. Matt, a native Floridian, witnessed the devastation caused by the very active hurricane seasons of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Atlantic_hurricane_season and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Atlantic_hurricane_season early in his college days. This experience, along with his interest in computers and coding, led to his study of coastal storm surge and flooding.   Today, Amanda and Matt are actively involved in the https://n-ewn.org/ (N-EWN), a collaborative effort between USACE and the University of Georgia’s https://www.iris.uga.edu/. They’re excited about their work together using the https://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/Media/Fact-Sheets/Fact-Sheet-Article-View/Article/476697/coastal-storm-modeling-system/, or CSTORM.   CSTORM is a very robust tool developed by Dr. Chris Massey at USACE’s Engineering Research and Development Center that, in real time, couples storm surge and wave modeling. CSTORM can model different scenarios for storm timing, whether a storm hits at high or low tide; how strong the winds are; how fast the storm is moving; and different sea-level-rise conditions. As Amanda says, “Using CSTORM, we're able to look at historical storms, and synthetic storms. We can look at a thousand different storm scenarios before those storms are seen and predict what would happen during those given events, and we can look at role of natural infrastructure on our coastline. We're able to share those storms with our partners at University of Georgia and have them run them through their different setups and do scaling that Matt has been working on.”     An example schematic workflow for ERDC's CSTORM-MS. Source: ERDC CHL Fact Sheet.   Matt’s focus is scaling up this modeling to evaluate natural infrastructure features in both inland and coastal areas. He’s using CSTORM to run various scenarios: “We’re thinking about flood-plain reconnection, removing or moving levees back from the immediate vicinity of the riverbank. We're talking about utilizing what exists and what nature does so well and its adaptation through wetlands, salt marshes, mangroves, oyster and coral reefs, barrier island systems, beach and dune systems, and many others. In a nutshell, when we're thinking about these natural features, we're really wanting to work with nature rather than keep nature out like we've done in the past with concrete, and levy and sea wall structures. So, it's a new paradigm in how we're approaching coastal engineering – a more holistic view.”   He goes on to describe some of the initial work modeling the effects of the North Carolina Outer Banks barrier-islands system using various scenarios to assess the protective benefits of these barrier islands during extreme storms and hurricanes. “Based on what we’ve learned, we can help others better utilize these natural barriers in future planning.”   Jeff highlights the importance of modeling the role of nature-based solutions, such as barrier islands: “This type of research illustrating the importance of the Outer Banks can be extrapolated to illustrate the importance of other island features too, and where it could be opportunistic to be able to create more islands in vulnerable areas along our coast. Those created islands, perhaps through beneficial use of dredged sediment, create more resilience. Matt’s work is helping us understand that island systems can be valuable in other areas as well.”   The https://ewn.erdc.dren.mil/?p=7972 will help project teams use the data generated by the model to inform their planning for restorating and creating natural features. Amanda is enthusiastic about the potential use: “We'll have 63 million nodes that include the entire North and South Atlantic coasts. We run all these different storms through them and get all this amazing data. Then we host that data on the https://chs.erdc.dren.mil/ so that anybody in this country, anybody in the world, can go get that data and readily figure out how best to incorporate natural features into their projects – and the benefits of doing so.”   The CSTORM Toolkit will provide practitioners with a faster way to assess a broader range of natural features, which ultimately will lead to more EWN innovation. Using CSTORM to conduct landscape-scale modeling for flood risk management, Matt explains, “allows us to modify the landscape then look at the hydrodynamic response from a flood, in terms of water levels, currents, waves, and so on. If we're talking about protecting communities from floods, we need to scale up to maybe miles, or tens of miles, to assess our nature-based solutions and implementation with these communities. It’s very important that we study this, generate the science, and provide design guidelines to the water community so nature-based solutions can be implemented in the real world.”   As Jeff notes, this modeling not only informs the design of natural features but also helps practitioners understand how these features will last over time and what efforts may be needed to maintain them through adaptive management. “With the tools that are being developed now, practitioners, in time, would be able to see – based on the different influences in the system – how an island feature, for example, may start to erode through natural processes. By understanding of the life expectancy of these features, we can then determine the optimal time to replenish or renourish those systems to ensure that we are getting the desired outcomes – the resilience and the engineering outcomes or maintaining the ecosystem service function. I think that's incredibly important work.”   What’s next? According to Amanda, her future will be focused on developing innovative, holistic systems-based solutions to coastal challenges, incorporating her passion for math and models. For Matt, “We’re at a critical time in our country’s history, and really the world, in how we are adapting to nature and how we are learning from past errors. We're at a turning point where we're able to really merge these issues that are compounding on us with climate change and engage coastal communities. One of my passions is to integrate our work with coastal communities and really understand where they're coming from, their cultural practices, their viewpoints. What are their actual problems? And then to design our tools and our frameworks to help them design solutions that will protect their communities in the present and for the future.”   Related Links
- https://ewn.erdc.dren.mil/
- http://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-king-85195413
- https://ewn.erdc.dren.mil/?page_id=494
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-tritinger-963123211/
- https://ewn.erdc.dren.mil/?page_id=3995
 
- https://n-ewn.org/
- https://ewn.erdc.dren.mil/?page_id=4174
 
- https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/collaborating-to-create-wildlife-habitat-while-restoring/id1528233207?i=1000492118642