Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Rivers are integrative features on the landscape, with the flow of water and nutrients making them hotspots for biodiversity but also vulnerable to the concentration of impacts from land or climate change. River management is challenged by the often-conflicting needs to: i) provide for human needs such as electrical power, transportation, irrigation, and drinking water; ii) protect against flood and erosion hazard; and iii) maximize the benefits that rivers and their floodplains can have for mitigating the twin worldwide crises in biodiversity and climate change. River engineering and restoration remain tied to structural approaches that favor hydraulic control over positive ecological outcomes and climate change mitigation. My research occurs at the intersection of the natural science of fluvial geomorphology with the applied science of river engineering. My long--term vision is to advance process--based river engineering strategies that are grounded in the natural sciences to achieve more better ecological outcomes and maximize the resilience of our communities. Over the next five years the objectives of my research program are to: a)Resolve mechanisms underlying the diversity of pool--riffle morphologies in gravel bed rivers; b)Develop sediment transport augmentation as a process--based restoration strategy, and c)Refine methods for the prediction of erosion hazard. The research will employ a mixture of innovative field, laboratory, and numerical methods that will lead to novel advances, including: 1) a conceptual model of the diversity of an important gravel bed river morphology; 2) a better understanding of flow and sediment transport processes in environments that are often targeted for restoration; 3) new data and analysis of the physical reasons that urban rivers degrade; 4) tested strategies for rebuilding channel morphology using a nature-based approach; 5) recommendations for comprehensive erosion hazard assessments in urban and alpine environments; and 6) robust erosion damage curves for use in financial models and decision support tools. The proposed research program addresses economic and environmental issues that are important to Canadians. The research program will train 9 uniquely skilled innovators who will work in academia, private practice and the government on problems related to river engineering and wicked interdisciplinary water management problems. Research results will be widely shared within academia and outside through national guidelines on nature-based solutions for rivers and financial risk assessment tools for stormwater management decision making in cities to maximize the impact of the work.