The ET-AL lab's Nate Hough-Snee recently brought home the bacon, winning a student research grant from the Society of Wetland Scientists. Nate will use these funds to support his ongoing research that examines the ability of beaver dams to acts as buffers against erosion in flashy, arid streams.  Most importantly, the grant will support post-restoration geomorphic monitoring to better understand the annual-scale efficacy of beaver-assisted restoration projects. ​

The ET-AL's Alan "cash money" Kasprak has taken the top award in the "Best Student Competition" at the interagency conference on sedimentation and hydrologic modeling for his work modeling the evolution of braided rivers. Congrats Alan! 

From yesterday's announcement:
I'm stoked for @CNRUSU's @AlanKasprak, winner of the #SEDHYD2015 best student paper award! #Rivers #Reno#CacheMoney pic.twitter.com/5wwg8IqJHT
— Nate Hough-Snee (@NHoughSnee) April 21, 2015

Under the glow of the Coors Brewing Company and Colorado School of Mines, Nate delivered the opening talk at the Society of Wetland Scientists' Rocky Mountain meeting in Golden, CO last week. His slides, "Beaver emulation and facilitation to restore streams: cases from the semi-arid West" are now hosted at Figshare (linked above).

Originally posted Apr 19, 2015, 7:22 PM by Nate Hough-Snee 

FHC staff, Elijah Portugal was interviewed yesterday by Jennifer Pemberton from Utah Public Radio about the proposed FHC beaver management plan with Walmart and the City of Logan for the Spring Creek Wetland beaver complex.  The radio program is called, 'The Source'  and is a monthly program about water issues in Utah. The story aired Friday April 24th at 9am on 91.5/89.5 FM Logan or upr.org in an hour long segment on 'Rivers & Streams - Messiness Matters'. ​

Originally posted Apr 17, 2015, 12:31 PM by Elijah Portugal ​

This Friday, GCMRC and SBSC are hosting Alan Kasprak who will give a seminar:

"Linking Sediment Transport and Channel Morphology in Braided Rivers"
Brown Bag Seminar
12:00 PM Friday, March 13th
Building 3 Conference Room (#367)


Alan is a PhD Candidate at Utah State University. Please see the abstract for his talk and his biosketch below.


Abstract: Channel form and sediment transport are closely linked in alluvial rivers. This seminar will focus on two research directions, both aimed at developing a better understanding of feedbacks between channel morphology and particle transport specific to braided rivers. The first portion of the seminar will detail a series of laboratory flume experiments that used fluorescent tracer particles coupled with ultra-high-resolution topography and digital elevation model differencing to link particle travel distances with in-channel geomorphic units. The findings underscore the importance of channel bars, particularly bar heads and bar margins, in acting as deposition sites for particles in transport. The second part of the seminar will upscale the results of flume experiments using numerical modeling. By simply modeling the kinematics of sediment transport using path length distributions that predict likely travel distances for particles in transport, we can develop efficient morphodynamic models for braided rivers. The open-source morphodynamic model presented here shows promise both as a validated predictive utility and as an experimental framework for exploring the effect of various process representations on resultant channel form. The results of this research point to fundamental form-process links in braided rivers, where simple relationships between channel morphology and sediment dynamics have long been hypothesized. The understanding gained from these relationships provides a way forward for efficient predictive models of channel evolution at event, annual, and decadal scales.
 
BioSketch: Alan Kasprak is a PhD Candidate in Utah State University’s Watershed Sciences Department, where he works with Dr. Joe Wheaton in the Ecogeomorphology and Topographic Analysis Laboratory. His dissertation focuses on understanding the relationship between sediment transport distances and channel morphology in braided rivers, and using that understanding to develop simple yet predictive morphodynamic models. More broadly, Alan’s research seeks to disentangle natural and anthropogenic drivers of geomorphic change in river systems using high-resolution topographic measurement and analysis techniques. Prior to his time at USU, Alan received a BS in Geology/Geophysics from Boston College, and a Master’s in Earth Sciences from Dartmouth College. 

​Check out how climate change is affecting glaciers, rivers, floodplains, ecosystems, and public park access at Mount Rainier National Park in a recent article from The News Tribune (Tacoma, WA).

After two field seasons at Mount Rainier National Park, et al. graduate student, Becca Rossi, is featured in the article/video for her research on avulsion channels in the Carbon River Valley (northwest side of the park), and an all park natural hazard inventory and vulnerability assessment. Her contributions have aided in understanding avulsion mechanisms and floodplain response and interaction with large woody debris within an old growth forest. Her efforts have also helped management teams at Mount Rainier evaluate road access and park infrastructure vulnerabilities in the event of future natural hazards. ​

Originally posted Jan 4, 2015, 1:47 PM by Rebecca Rossi