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 release a full season this fall.  Episodes include:

Ep 2:1 – Dr. George Annandale on the Motivation, Economics, and Approaches to Reservoir Sediment Management

Ep 2:2 – Dr. Greg Morris on Reservoir Sediment Management Techniques and Applications

Ep 2:3 – Dr. John Shelley and Dr. Paul Boyd on Reservoir Sediment Management Complexities and Case Studies in the United States

Ep 2:4 – Jennifer Bountry on Dam Removal

We will be releasing these episodes every two weeks over the summer, then will return with some great interviews on River Mechanics, Sediment Transport, and Fluvial Geomorphology with a full third season in the fall.

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

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.

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

 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/engineers who have been working on the Ecuadorian response since the beginning. 

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

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 hazards, these events are getting more attention, so these findings have never been more salient.  I wanted to have a conversation about mud and debris flows in the first season, but my guest wish list only really had one name on it.  So I was thrilled to get to talk to Dr Iverson.  And I had a lot of questions.

Richard described wide range of debris flow processes and physics including some remarkable, counter-intuitive, processes that are likely to change the way you think about these events.  It was a remarkable conversation, and I thought Richard made some very technical ideas really accessible.

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

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 projects, sediment budgets, and some surprising stats that you probably don't know about dredging.

Before Dr. Brutsche led the program she was a distinguished researcher and practitioner in coastal sediment management.  So in this episode, we increase the scale, and move downstream a bit to talk to Katie about that whole world of "post-river" sediment.

 Check out the RSM Website
The "Beneficial Use" guidance Katie mentioned is: EM 1110-2-5025 Dredging and Dredged Material Management

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

 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.  But Chris also recently spent a couple years as a project engineer with Bonneville Power’s, where he got to see more small, medium, and large scale, river restoration projects in a couple years than most people see in a career.  

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

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're having on this feed.   So I invited two of the conference leaders to talk about it.

Dr. Tim Randle (Bureau of Reclamation) and Dr. Paul Boyd (Corps of Engineers) are part of the team of agency sediment specialists planning this conference.  

SEDHYD is in St Louis May 8-12, 2023.  You can find out more at: https://www.sedhyd.org/

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

 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 "day job," John is currently the the chief of the Corps Missouri River Basin Water Management Division where he leads the team that manages the massive reservoirs on the upper Missouri.

But for most of his career John led the Sedimentation and Reservoirs branch at the Corps' Omaha district.  Over the years I made two observations about this branch: 1) it was the only Corps-District Branch with an specific sedimentation mission and 2) it generated a remarkable amount of sediment analysis and river mechanics talent...which always made a lot of sense to me, given how much I've learned from John Remus over the years.    

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

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 experimental/numerical/field experience gives her a couple different multi-perspective views on rivers.  When you match those perspectives with a fundamental curiosity about how sediment processes work, it makes for a fascinating conversation.  

We talked about Wilcock-Crowe, step pool systems (see her flume experiment video at the webpage), gravel clusters, "low flow bed tempering," the impact of vegetation "porosity" on sediment mechanics, and several other topics.

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

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 very best 1D sediment transport modelers for decades, he also developed several equations and algorithms that multiple models use.  In 2020, he won the ASCE, Hans Albert Einstein award. 

And, while I think Dr. Copeland's modeling expertise has a lot of value to the community growing around this podcast (and we spent some time talking modeling) his sediment and river mechanics contributions include much more .  He led a team who wrote the Corps early guidance on restoration channel design and developed an important, expedited, tool to evaluate sediment continuity of restored channels, a common failure mode of early restoration projects.  We talked to him about all of that...and some more technical topics that we spun out into video shorts (see the website link).

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