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

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 of what I understand about sediment data I've learned from Molly.  But a substantial percentage of what I know about sediment measurements, sediment data processing, and potential data pitfalls comes either from her publications or conversations we've had over the years.   This was a fun conversation that hit on several of those topics.

We talked about the sediment data types that the USGS collects and publishes, concentration-vs-load, sources of flow-load variability, isokinetic sampling, common sediment data interpretation errors, sediment surrogates, international sediment sampling studies, the future of sediment sampling, and several other topics.

You can find the data we talked about at the USGS NWIS Water Quality and Sediment Data Site: https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/qw

This episode was funded by the US Army Corps of Engineers Regional Sediment Management R&D Program (RSM)

Host: Stanford Gibson, Sediment Specialist at the Hydrologic Engineering Center and on the HEC-RAS program.

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. 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 develop their River Science and Engineering Program. 

But the main reason we invited David to be the first guest on the podcast, is that he is responsible for mentoring a generation (and, by now, more than one generation) of River Scientists and Engineers in the Corps of Engineers.    From the first time I met him in my early 20's, conversations with David have formed the way I think about river processes and our engineering interventions in river systems at every scale.  

We talked about his experiences mentoring new river scientists and engineers, the lessons the Corps learned from the "demonstration project," the appropriate place of rock and vegetation in restoration design, and balancing the "E's" of human intervention in river systems. 

Other bonus content is available at the podcast website:
https://www.hec.usace.army.mil/confluence/rasdocs/rastraining/latest/rsm-river-mechanics-podcast

and the HEC Sediment YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/stanfordgibson

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

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.

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