EWN - Engineering With Nature

Advancing the practice of engineering with nature is a primary goal for the Engineering With Nature Program, and technology transfer through publications is a critical pathway to achieving this goal. In Season 8, Episode 8, host Sarah Thorne is joined by Amanda Tritinger, Deputy Lead of the Engineering with Nature Program, and Courtney Chambers, Communications Lead for the Engineering With Nature Program. They're discussing the importance of the Programs' key publications, including two new ones in 2025.Publications are critical to advancing the practice and closing the gaps in knowledge. As Amanda says, “They showcase real-world applications of natural infrastructure and inspire others to adopt these strategies in their own projects. By publishing, we make it possible for natural infrastructure to be integrated into more projects and drive innovation across multiple sectors.”  This episode highlights several examples of innovative EWN Publications, including:The EWN Atlas series;Natural Infrastructure for Mission Readiness at U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Installations – Also known as “The Navy Playbook”; andThe Four Coasts Project Idea Handbook – design concepts that incorporate Engineering With Nature from four of the EWN Proving Grounds districts: San Francisco, Mobile, the Great Lakes, and Philadelphia.  Courtney explains that the Atlas series was born out of a conversation that Todd Bridges, founder of the EWN Program, had with the then USACE Director of Civil Works, James Dalton who suggested that people would understand the key principles of EWN if they could see what they look like in practice. Its success has led to these additional innovative publications.Hollie Janson Schmidt, National Director of the Planning Group for Advisory Solutions at Jacobs, was the project executive responsible for developing the Navy Playbook with EWN. She joins the conversation and explains that, “The intention of the book is to really be nontechnical and user friendly so that someone could look at some of these sketches and really understand some of the characteristics and the components that we're addressing.” She adds, “It's just really meant to sort of excite people with the visuals and the beauty of what we were trying to bring forward.”Mindy Strevig, Managing Engineer at Anchor QEA, leads the collaboration on the development of the Four Coasts Handbook. She also joins the conversation and notes “The goal of the Four Coasts Handbook, is to get those solution concepts visualized and conveyed in a way that folks can continue those conversations through their traditional processes to get these projects funded, garner support, and move them to implementation.The EWN team continues to promote the work of the EWN Program and its partners through publications like these, as well as through ERDC Tech Notes and Tech Reports, and peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals. Amanda stresses that “these publications are invaluable to our practitioners because they provide a strong scientific foundation combined with the real-world application of natural infrastructure. By publishing this work, we ensure that knowledge is shared, lessons are learned, and innovations are being scaled up. These publications are critical to advancing the practice. They're how we bridge that gap between research and implementation and offer actionable insights.” For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  Amanda Tritinger – LinkedInCourtney Chambers – LinkedInHollie Janson Schmidt – LinkedInMindy Strevig – LinkedIn 

Season 8 Episode 7 was originally released as Season 6 Episode 10 in December 2023. Can nature make us happier, healthier and more creative? The simple answer is yes, ... and it's been scientifically proven. Host Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature (EWN) Program, US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE),thought this was a perfect time to replay one of our favorite episodes – our conversation with author Florence Williams from S6E10, which originally aired in December 2023. We had a great conversation with Florence about her book, The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative. Florence, who is a science journalist, author, speaker and podcaster spent over 3 years traveling around the world talking with leading scientists—and taking part in science experiments—focused on quantifying the benefits of nature to people's health and well-being.What did she learn? Well, the benefits of Nature are clear—spending more time outdoors is good for our physical health and our mental health. As Florence says, everything from short daily experiences in nature like taking a walk when you take a break at lunch to longer, immersive wilderness experiences like hiking, camping, and nature retreats are all beneficial—she says “we need all of it.” The bottom line is that regular “nature fixes” are literally good for mind, body and soul—and now we have the science to prove it.Sarah had the opportunity to talk with Florence recently and I asked her how writing The Nature Fix had changed her life.  She said it was “transformative”—it changed her relationship with Nature—which she says continues to be a source of strength, interest, and passion. And it has opened many doors for her leading to host of new opportunities.We hope you enjoy this encore edition of the EWN Podcast and that it inspires you to take time to get outdoors and take in the health benefits of Nature, even if it is only for a few minutes every day. Who knows, it just could be transformative! Enjoy the show! For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  Jeff King at LinkedInFlorence Williams – Naturefix at LinkedIn

Nature is a powerful thing. While hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in 2006, our guest let go of her dream to compete at the 2008 Olympics to pursue a career protecting the environment. In Season 8, Episode 6, host Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature (EWN) Program, US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), are joined by special guest Robyn DeYoung, who now leads the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Green Infrastructure Program. Through the Green Infrastructure Federal Collaborative, Robyn is bringing federal agencies together to advance nature-based solutions (NBS), including finding ways to streamline permitting and helping communities navigate funding. The Collaborative has just released a best practice guide on Federal Permitting and Environmental Reviews for Nature-Based Solutions and short videos for funding and technical assistance.Robyn joined the USEPA in 2010 working with states and local governments on clean energy, applying all that she had learned—including the value of teamwork that she learned from field hockey. In her current role as Green Infrastructure program manager, she continues to help people work together: “How can we collaborate and use people's unique talents—even people that might not agree with you, but have great ideas?”Green infrastructure can mean different things to different people. As Robyn describes it, “If I'm in a room full of engineers, then green infrastructure means you're using natural systems—native plants, soils, permeable surfaces—to help with bringing us back to predevelopment hydrology. But for the rest of us, the way that I define green infrastructure is that we're creating functional green space and other designs so that we can prevent flooding, keep our cities cool, and keep our waters clean using natural processes, using things like rain gardens or street trees.”Robyn notes that one of the primary functions of EPA's Green Infrastructure Program is outreach, providing resources to help people understand the economic, environmental and social benefits of green infrastructure, including handbooks for Green Infrastructure Design, peer exchange webinars, and models and tools. “One of the focuses of our program is to make sure that we have free information so people can design, build, maintain, and monitor the green infrastructure in their cities and communities.” Looking forward, Robyn notes some of the focus and priorities she sees in the next year, starting with EPA's 2035 Green Infrastructure Strategic Agenda that her program has been working on. She describes three priority areas: (1) Demonstrating the benefits of green infrastructure in ways that align with the economic, environmental, and social benefits that people value; (2) Connecting more communities to federal funding and technical assistance. And (3) continuing to engage with communities. “We want to do everything we can to bring nature-based solutions into those neighborhoods in a way that they want to use them, that's culturally relevant, so that they can really take it and run with it.”Robyn's call to action is for listeners to learn more about what the Green Infrastructure Program is doing and find out about the resources that are available to support individuals and communities interested in green infrastructure. For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  Jeff King at LinkedInRobyn DeYoung at LinkedIn

Since 1970, the bird population in North America has declined by about 3 billion birds. In Season 8, Episode 5, host Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature (EWN) Program, US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), are joined by special guest, Dr. Elizabeth Gray, CEO of the National Audubon Society. Elizabeth is an ornithologist and a world-renowned champion of science-based conservation and leads an organization dedicated to protecting birds by altering the course of biodiversity loss. Elizabeth is the first woman CEO of Audubon since its founding in 1905. In her lifetime, Elizabeth has seen significant changes in bird populations. “This is just really tragic, and we know two-thirds of those birds are threatened by climate change. When I go out in the field, I see increasing habitat loss and habitat fragmentation. Climate change is a magnifier of all these effects, and birds are indicators of planetary health—really the sentinels and the symbols of how the planet's doing.”Audubon's 5-year strategic plan, called “Flight Plan,” is designed to “bend the bird curve”—to halt, and ultimately reverse, this decline of birds across the Americas by using science; building strong partnerships; and finding solutions that are positive for birds, for people, and for the planet. “We believe that what birds need—clean water, clean air, a healthy food system, a healthy climate—is also what people need.” Elizabeth notes how these efforts continue a tradition going back to the early 1900s when Audubon began protecting one of the last Reddish Egret rookeries. These efforts grew into Audubon's Coastal Bird Stewardship program, which now has over 500 sites in coastal areas, 1500 volunteers, and 250 partner organizations.Collaboration and partnerships are key to addressing these complex and interconnected issues and Audubon is well known for bringing together unlikely partners, industry, local communities, policy makers, decision-makers, government officials, Indigenous communities, and other conservation organizations. “We often have different priorities, but we've found that you can get people who have different priorities, even different values, certainly different approaches, to sit at a table if you can align around the outcome that you want to achieve together.” She adds that birds are Audubon's “superpower.” “Birds don't pay attention to geographic boundaries. They don't pay attention to what divides people or countries and things like that. They're really the ultimate unifier here. And I think to me, birds remind us of our shared humanity and the fact that we really share this planet.”Nature-based solutions (NBS) play a key role in Audubon's efforts. As Elizabeth notes, NBS can contribute significant greenhouse gas reductions through protecting, restoring, and appropriately managing natural areas, coastal systems, mangroves, grasslands, and forests while also delivering cobenefits to nature and society. Jeff notes the strong synergy and alignment between the mission of Audubon and the objectives of EWN. “With nature-based solutions, we can create resilience while also enhancing habitat and biodiversity and accomplish many more cobenefits. I see so many things that are complementary here, and I'm just excited about what you're doing and seeing on the horizon within Audubon.” For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  Jeff King at LinkedInElizabeth Gray at LinkedIn 

When we think about the use of nature-based features to increase coastal resilience, the focus is mostly on coasts along the ocean. But what about the Great Lakes? Over the past 10 years, the Great Lakes have experienced both historic high and low lake levels. These extreme fluctuations cause flooding, erosion, and property damage, often putting people living in communities at risk. In Season 8, Episode 4, host Sarah Thorne is joined by Burton Suedel, Research Biologist in the Environmental Laboratory at the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and David Bucaro, Chief of the Planning Branch, Chicago District, USACE. They are discussing the important work underway to make the Great Lakes more resilient to the effects of climate change.The Great Lakes play a critical role in the heart of North America and are being affected by climate change, including rapidly changing water levels and less ice coverage. There is a complex interaction between the lakes, land, and atmosphere that make it difficult to model the system. As David notes, this creates high levels of uncertainty in long-term projections of lake levels and challenges for making informed, resilient, and adaptable decisions about needed long-term investments.To help better prepare for these future conditions, David and his colleagues are working with other federal agencies, Tribal nations, state and local governments and academic partners, to identify the full range of Great Lakes water levels, wave heights, and ice conditions under a range of plausible climate change scenarios. This is the focus of the 6-year, $14M Great Lakes Coastal Resilience Study (GLCRS), a regional partnership to create a strategy that identifies vulnerable coastal areas and offers an array of potential actions that can be taken to bolster the built natural coastal environments.The first step was the development of a shared vision and a basin-wide assessment of vulnerabilities looking at existing populations, infrastructure, habitat, land use, and socially vulnerable populations across all of the Great Lakes coasts. This effort will help communities better understand the frequency and impacts of various climate scenarios and will provide detailed information for planners and engineers, including an assessment of “hotspot areas” more vulnerable to future conditions. The next step will be to identify specific actions for the hotspot areas, which may include a combination of monitoring and further study. The final step will be to produce the Great Lakes Coastal Resiliency Plan, which will include strategic recommendations and prioritize actions for USACE, other federal agencies, states, locals, and other nonfederal interests.This effort is complemented by the work that Burton and his team are doing on The Great Lakes Natural and Nature-Based Features Playbook, which is intended to develop new conceptual nature-based designs specific to the Great Lakes that will achieve greater resiliency and adaptability to climate change. The Playbook is intended to be used by planners and NBS practitioners within and outside of USACE to support the planning-level cost-benefit analyses. David and Burton hope the Great Lakes Coastal Resiliency Plan and the EWN Playbook will benefit other regions and advance the practice of NBS.For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  Burton Suedel at LinkedInDavid Bucaro at LinkedIn 

In Season 8, Episode 3, host Sarah Thorne and Amanda Tritinger, Deputy National Lead of the Engineering With Nature (EWN) Program, US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), are joined by Brian Davis, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia (UVA), and Cathy Johnson, Coastal Ecologist, Northeast Region, National Park Service (NPS). Along with their colleagues and collaborators, Brian and Cathy are working with nature and incorporating innovative nature-based solutions (NBS) to combat the significant effects of climate change on three coastal national parks at high risk for extreme storms and rising sea levels.Brian is passionate about the opportunity that NBS provides to protect natural resources, while also designing for people—protecting the things we value and the way we use public spaces. “Traditionally a lot of design practices saw those two things as separate. One of the amazing things that's happening through landscape architecture and EWN and NBS is to unify those things.Cathy is passionate about the NPS's dual mandate of conserving natural resources and preserving cultural resources. “I feel so lucky to work here to preserve values of the NPS for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.” Cathy notes that NPS's challenging mandate is made all the more difficult by climate change and its broad scale impacts, especially along the coast. About three years ago, Brian and Cathy formed the Preserving Coastal Parklands Team. The idea was to bring together designers and scientists, as well as engineers and other subject matter experts that could work with NPS in these different contexts and develop new nature-based solutions. Brian and Cathy describe projects that they worked on located at the Colonial National Historical Park, Assateague Island National Seashore, and the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historic Park.Asked what they have learned from their experience, both Brian and Cathy note the value of collaboration. “One of the key lessons that we took away” Brian says, “was the value of being able to work with and listen to the people that are managing the landscape—especially the Park staff, but it also other special interest groups, people that go out there for particular reasons, or have some stake in the future of the place and some ideas about it.”Amanda reflects on how these examples of NBS can be used by others: “What you and your team are building is a framework for how to approach these issues to achieve the compromise of these multiple needs and multiple benefits. You are creating a framework that ideally could be picked up by others in similar situations.”When asked for their calls to action to listeners, Cathy encouraged people to “Visit your parks and the other natural places around you to better understand what's at risk from climate change and talk to other folks about it.” Brian's call to action is one of optimism: “Sometimes, especially studying climate change, the scale of the problem can seem daunting. But just being out in these landscapes—meeting the people that work in them and visit them—leads to ideas about preserving those values and understanding better what's possible in the future. That fills me with optimism.”For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  Amanda Tritinger at LinkedInBrian Davis at UVACathy Johnson at ResearchGate 

In Season 8, Episode 2, host Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature (EWN) Program, USACE, welcome back Dr. Christopher Lemon, a physician and Assistant Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine; Faculty Codirector of Clinical Programs with the Institute for Planetary Health; and Fellow with the Bloomberg American Health Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In Episode 1, we talked with Chris about his journey to becoming a medical doctor and an expert and thought leader in the emerging field of planetary health. In this episode, we focus on Chris's association with the Planetary Health Alliance (PHA) and how he and PHA are helping people understand and adapt to the changing conditions posed by climate change and encouraging people to take action.As an emergency physician, Chris is attuned to the need to take action. Noting the impacts of climate change—extreme heat, weather, drought, flooding, and disease—Chris contends that all these complicated situations boil down to the fact that Humanity is a part of this planet and that we will all be affected, “If you care about yourself, if you care about the health of your family and your loved ones, you need to act now because there is no question everyone is going to be impacted by climate change.”Citing The 2023 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, he describes troubling trends such as heat-related deaths of adults over 65 rising by over 80% percent since the 1990s; increased frequency of heat waves and droughts in recent decades, associated with roughly 127 million more people experiencing moderate to severe food insecurity; and new locations now suitable for the transmission of deadly infections. “These impacts could be an early sign of the future that we have in store. I think we're facing a scenario where things could be potentially catastrophic, and that also means to our health.”Much of Chris's efforts in this area is through his association with the PHA, a consortium of more than 450 universities, nongovernment organizations, research institutes, and government entities from more than 75 countries around the world. Launched in 2015, Chris defines Planetary health as “a solutions-oriented transdisciplinary field and social movement focused on analyzing and addressing the impacts of human disruptions on Earth's natural systems and how that will eventually impact human health, as well as all life on Earth.” Essential to planetary health is the understanding that it's not just climate change, it's ‘everything change,' encompassing the other ways our natural systems are destabilizing due to human influence, such as biodiversity loss, pollution, land use change, water scarcity, nutrient overloading, and marine degradation.Looking to the future, Chris is excited about the growing movement toward planetary health. His call to action is for listeners go to the PHA website and become a part of the growing community. “This is not a website where you join and it's just an email that comes out every so often. This alliance is a decentralized community for all stakeholders. We would love to interact and engage with you where you stand. I bet you have a superpower and an expertise that we need in the global community right now.”For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  Jeff King at LinkedInChristopher Lemon at LinkedIn

After another summer of sweltering heat, extreme flooding, and in several places, unprecedented forest fires, we're thinking even more about climate change and about the nexus of climate change and health. In S8 E1, host Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature (EWN) Program, US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), are joined by Dr. Christopher Lemon, a physician and Asst. Professor, Dept. of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine; Faculty Co-Director of Clinical Programs with the JH Institute for Planetary Health; and Fellow with the Bloomberg American Health Initiative at the JH Bloomberg School of Public Health. Experts project that over 3 billion people are already vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Chris is using what he calls his “superpowers” to assess how climate change is affecting people's health around the world and take action. He's passionate about making a difference in his community and across the planet.Chris and Jeff met at a conference at the US Fish and Wildlife Service's National Conservation Training Center where Chris gave a presentation on Climate Change and Global Health. For Chris, the conference was an opportunity to get in front of an audience with different backgrounds but a common interest. “We started to pick up on the mental or physical health implications of some of the EWN projects at military installations. Pretty quickly it became this great synergy of how I bring certain things to the table as part of these complex solutions.” Jeff agrees and notes the magnitude of the opportunity. “These military installations are a wonderful opportunity – across 25 million acres of land – to do something positive for the employees at the installations, the military personnel, and the communities adjacent to military installations. They all can benefit from this interaction with nature.”Chris compares his experiences in healthcare, particularly with COVID, to the coming challenges he sees with climate change and discusses the alignment of healthcare with EWN. In both, the “traditional” approach has often been to try to control nature to an ever-increasing degree. “Right now, US healthcare contributes roughly 8.5 percent of US emissions. So, we are ‘doing no harm' with the goal of making people healthy; and yet, ironically, because we're not working within the constructs of nature anymore, we're actually making people unhealthy.” It is this more macro view of climate change and public health that Chris is trying to address at the Institute for Planetary Health. “It focuses on analyzing and addressing the impacts of human disruptions on Earth's natural systems. But importantly, those disruptions have impacts on human health and all life on Earth. We are bringing that into the center of the conversation.Chris's story resonates with Jeff and what he is seeing and striving for in the EWN community: “Chris, I admire the energy and enthusiasm with which you approach the challenge of planetary health. It's quite evident that you have so much knowledge to share, as well as the energy to make change a reality.” Jeff and Sarah invited Chris back to talk more about the important work being done by the Planetary Health Alliance, a growing consortium of over 450 universities, NGOs, research institutes, and government entities who are committed to understanding and addressing the impacts of global environmental change on human health and wellbeing. Our conversation with Chris continues in Episode 2 on October 9. We hope you enjoy these special episodes!For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  Jeff King at LinkedInChristopher Lemon at LinkedIn

As summer wanes and we celebrate back-to-school time with our friends in academia, students, and parents, we're pleased to launch Season 8 of the Engineering With Nature® Podcast! Host Sarah Thorne recently caught up with Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature (EWN) Program, to discuss what the EWN Team has been up to over the summer, share some highlights from Season 7, and offer a glimpse of what's ahead in Season 8.As Jeff describes, the EWN Team has had a busy summer extending the reach of EWN by collaborating with engineering and landscape architect colleagues, and working with the EWN Proving Grounds leads on larger, more ambitious projects. “We've started to envision really large EWN projects that will be pursued at a systems level so that we can maximize the function and benefits that can be derived from these projects. I'm really excited about having an opportunity to publish these as ‘EWN Playbooks' and have them available soon.” The EWN Team is also growing. Steven Bailey, a landscape architect, recently joined the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC). His hire reflects the growing importance of landscape architecture in EWN. And continuing EWN's tradition of training the next generation of EWN practitioners, Claire Middendorf, an Environmental & Ecological Engineering student at Purdue University, completed a summer internship working with Burton Suedel, one of our frequent EWN Podcast hosts.Jeff is encouraged, and excited about the progress of EWN more broadly within the USACE on the contribution EWN and NBS are making to the navigation, flood risk management, and ecosystem restoration missions. “Many elements within the USACE are now focused on NBS and wanting to have NBS be prioritized across all of our business lines. The conversations we're having are focused on what can we do as an organization to accelerate implementation of NBS.”Jeff and the EWN Team continued outreach to external partners to expand opportunities for integration of NBS. They have been reaching out to colleagues in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US, and internationally, to colleagues with the Environmental Agency in the United Kingdom, and the Rijkswaterstaat, which is responsible for the design, construction, management and maintenance of the Netherlands' primary infrastructure facilities. The theme for Season 8 is Channeling the Energy. That Jeff explains is inspired by the energy and excitement in the conversations that he has with all the EWN and NBS practitioners, collaborators and educators that he meets. “It's that energy and it's very contagious. So, that's our theme – channeling the energy.” Listeners can expect another great lineup of episodes in Season 8, including topics such as the nexus of climate change and health, climate policy initiatives being driven by NOAA; how the Navy is incorporating NBS into their plans and projects; and some of the groundbreaking work being done by our EWN colleagues in both the policy and program areas.Mark your calendar for the launch of Season 8 on September 25! In Season 8, Episode 1, we're speaking with Dr. Chris Lemon, Johns Hopkins Department of Emergency Medicine, Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health, and Fellow of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative. We focus on Chris's journey into climate change and global health challenges. We hope you'll tune in.For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  Jeff King at LinkedInSarah Thorne at LinkedInDave Trafford at LinkedIn

The Arctic is changing more rapidly than anywhere else on earth due to climate change, and this is profoundly impacting the people that live in and depend on the ecosystems in these cold regions. In Season 7, Episode 13, host Sarah Thorne and cohost Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature (EWN) Program, US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), welcome back Laura Wendling, Senior Research Scientist at SINTEF Community in Trondheim, Norway. We continue our conversation on how innovative nature-based solutions (NBS) are being used in cold regions. After recording Episode 12, Laura was headed to the Gaia Arctic Summit held in Vesterålen in Northern Norway. The summit focused on how to accelerate the transition to climate resilience in the Arctic. She returned inspired: “It was fabulous from start to finish. The landscape there is absolutely stunning, and I think seeing it really brought home how important it is that we protect this beautiful area and the people who live there.” The summit brought together people from policy, finance, business, research and innovation, and public administration. “The main message for me is the need to collaborate across disciplines in how we work every day—not just having a meeting once a year but how we work in our daily life and how we plan things.”Laura goes on to discuss the policies, challenges, and opportunities for advancing NBS in cold regions and some of the efforts going on in Europe. She notes that there is strong explicit support for NBS within the European Green Deal and associated strategies such as the Biodiversity Strategy for 2030—policies designed to set goals to deliver on international commitments. One of the challenges that Laura notes is aligning policy at various levels, from the high-level European national policies to those on the ground at the local level. Jeff notes a similar challenge in the US: “Even those individuals or organizations that are receptive to the idea of NBS still have their own set of policies, rules, or regulations that they must adhere to and sometimes those can be contrary to the overall goal of integrating NBS into a landscape. We must find that common ground and be able to highlight the value of NBS and what that means for local economies, sustainability, and resilience.”Laura also notes challenges in valuing NBS and making trade-offs are particularly evident in the Arctic. “Where we see the sea ice dissolving and opening up new transport routes and revealing previously unknown mineral resources, there are all sorts of development possibilities. How do we ensure that the Arctic is developing in a way that's consistent with the needs and desires of the local populations?”Looking forward, Jeff highlights the ongoing work at ERDC's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. “We are continuing to prioritize NBS and look for opportunities to integrate NBS concepts and projects into our Arctic communities. International collaboration is something that I want to see EWN continue to support.” Laura agrees with this effort and has a call to action for listeners: “I would ask everybody listening—our global community—to think about a consolidated action plan to engage the full range of stakeholders and move across borders to address the issues of climate change because climate change doesn't stop at borders. We all have to work together. Only global action is going to have the outcome that we all need.”We hope you enjoy our final Season 7 episodes on NBS in cold regions with Laura Wendling. Season 8 kicks off in September. For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  •      Jeff King at LinkedIn•      Laura Wendling at LinkedIn 

From Iowa to Australia to Finland, and most recently Norway, Laura Wendling has followed her passion to integrate nature with engineering and technology to create solutions that, as she says, “are workable in lots of different situations, including cold regions.” In Season 7, Episode 12, host Sarah Thorne and cohost Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature (EWN) Program, US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), are joined by Laura Wendling, Senior Research Scientist at SINTEF Community in Trondheim, Norway. Jeff and Laura met at a recent conference sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers.Laura's interest in innovating with nature was sparked in her undergraduate years while working as a research assistant on a project comping how constructed and natural wetlands purify water from agricultural runoff. “That really got me interested in understanding how we could design natural, or pseudo-natural systems that worked as well or almost as well as the natural system itself—like a real ecosystem.” As she says, her “ah-ha moment” was when she learned about the use of nature-based solutions (NBS): “To have the added emphasis on stakeholder engagement right from the beginning, and making sure that we plan projects so that we're deriving social and economic benefit in addition to the core target of achieving some kind of ecological outcome—it just made so much sense to me.”Today, Laura is particularly interested in how climate change is affecting cold regions. “The Arctic is warming at a rate that's far greater than the rest of the world, and there's been profound—possibly irreversible—effects on terrestrial, aquatic, freshwater, marine ecosystems, and the cryosphere, as well as the people who live in these areas.” Laura highlights some of her recent projects. In her work at SINTEF, she focuses on water and the environment, everything from water-cycle services and water management to the broader environmental issues associated with climate change.Laura also talks about the importance of spreading the word about NBS, including her work as coeditor of the Nature Based Solutions Journal and Evaluating the Impact of Nature-Based Solutions: A Handbook for Practitioners. “We can't do science in secret. We should be telling everybody what we're doing and sharing our results widely, including the things that don't work.” Laura also stresses the importance of using these indicators and measures to communicate beyond the scientific community. “To talk with people in different sectors, we need to present information in different ways. Traditionally, we haven't been as good at talking with the public policy sector. We need better evidence that can help to underpin evidence-based policy.” Jeff feels that Laura's travels and experiences have really aligned her focus with the principles and practices of EWN: “Everything you describe speaks volumes in terms of your affinity for EWN. You've been in the United States, Australia, Finland, and now Norway. You've had exposure to so many diverse ecosystems and so many different people. Those opportunities to learn in those diverse environments will serve you well, both now and in the future. I know you're going to continue to be a leader in this space.”Jeff and Sarah invited Laura back for Episode 13 to talk about the policies that are driving strategies for including NBS in Europe. For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  •      Jeff King at LinkedIn•      Laura Wendling at LinkedIn

In Season 7, Episode 11, host Sarah Thorne and cohost Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature (EWN) Program, US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), conclude their in-depth conversation with Katharine Hayhoe, Chief Scientist of The Nature Conservancy (TNC). In Part 3 of our special three-part series, Katharine talks about her role as an advocate and her mission to inspire others to take action on climate change. Her bottom line is that you don't have to be a top climate scientist to make a difference – we can all get involved. As a scientist, Katharine is an advocate for understanding the social science of how humans interact with information. “So often we physical and natural scientists feel like: ‘Oh, you just tell people the truth. Surely, they'll do the right thing, right?' Well, what social science tells us is no. If we haven't made that head to heart to hands connection, nothing is going to happen in the right direction, especially pushing against the accumulated inertia of our fossil-fuel based economy and society.”  Katharine notes the work of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, which finds that people's assumptions about what others think about climate change are usually wrong. “We assume that we care and very few other people do. We assume that we're doing things and nobody else is. We assume that nobody else is worried except me and my friends. But actually, they're already worried. They just don't know what to do. So, they don't want to talk about it.”Katharine's climate change advocacy is focused on talking about and encouraging other people to talk about climate change. She has initiated and supported multiple channels of communications on climate change, including her TED Talk in 2018, The Most Important Thing You Can Do to Fight Climate Change: Talk about It; her personal social media accounts and her Newsletter, Talking Climate; and her work with organizations like the Potential Energy Coalition and Science Moms. Jeff reflects on how inspiring and inclusive Katharine's message is, to include scientists, ecologists, engineers, social scientists, and artists.” As Katharine describes it, “We need people painting the pictures with words, with art, with music, with visual art, with spoken art, with every way we can.” Katharine plans to continue her tireless advocacy along many fronts. Her academic work is focused on developing and evaluating high-resolution climate projections and preparing for impacts and increasing resilience planning. As Chief Scientist of TNC, she is dedicated to supporting and advancing the work of TNC scientists. And she is going to continue her work with faith-based communities to advocate for climate action—including being the first plenary speaker at this year's World Evangelical Alliance annual meeting.Jeff closes by comparing her skill to another well-known Canadian, “That reminds me of Wayne Gretzky. He basically said, ‘I just skate to where I think or know that the puck is going to be.' That's exactly what you're saying here. We need to be thinking well out into the future and then leaning into those certain outcomes that we can anticipate and planning accordingly.” He adds, “Katharine, the message I am really drawn to is your ‘head to heart to hands' message. I want to use that and put it into practice in the Engineering With Nature program.  It is truly inspirational.”  This concludes our conversation with Katharine. We hope you enjoyed this special series! For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  •      Jeff King at LinkedIn•      Katharine Hayhoe at LinkedIn 

In Season 7, Episode 10, host Sarah Thorne and cohost Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature (EWN) Program, US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), continue their in-depth conversation with Katharine Hayhoe, Chief Scientist of The Nature Conservancy (TNC). In Part 2 of our special 3-part series, Katharine talks about taking action—living according to your values and making changes that contribute to climate solutions—and about the critical role of nature-based solutions (NBS) in addressing climate change. To live up to her personal climate action values Katharine measured her own carbon footprint 12 years ago and when she found that travel was the largest factor, she successfully transitioned over 80% of her talks to virtual. “Then the pandemic hit and I was ready to go.” She notes that when she does travel for an important event, she “bundles” other meetings and speaking opportunities around that event. “When I went to the climate COP two years ago in Egypt, I packed in 55 panels, meetings, talks, and events.”Katharine believes that communicating the message that climate action is a collective effort that all people can meaningfully contribute to, is essential. “People are worried about climate change, but they don't know what to do about it.” Picking up the analogy she used in S7E9 comparing the work of addressing climate change to moving a giant boulder, Katharine adds: “If we feel like we're the only hands on the boulder that we're trying to roll uphill, we will despair. But if we realize there are millions of hands on the boulder, in every country around the world, then we realize we're not alone. That global connectivity is absolutely essential to fixing this problem.”Katharine goes on to talk about the critical role of NBS as part of the response to climate change, noting that the IPCC estimates that 25% of present-day emissions could be addressed by NBS. “If I see a newspaper headline saying, ‘Is this a silver bullet for climate change?', I can tell you the answer is no. But I like to say there's a lot of silver buckshot, and nature is one of our biggest pieces of silver buckshot. I mean, 25% of the climate change pie? That is huge!” She adds that NBS also produces multiple benefits, and notes: “Nature is all through these climate solutions. In fact, I don't think there's any way for us to meet our commitments made in the Paris Agreement in 2015, in any way, shape, or form, if we leave nature out of the equation.”Jeff is highly complimentary of TNC's work on NBS and highlights the important contribution of TNC in bringing organizations together to collaborate on NBS initiatives such as the Natural Infrastructure Initiative that TNC led along with Caterpillar, USACE, the University of Georgia, and Ducks Unlimited. “When you put TNC in a room with, say, an AECOM or a Great Lakes Dredge and Dock, people start scratching their heads saying, ‘Hmm, what's this all about?' TNC brings so much interest and awareness to this space, showing how very different entities can work collaboratively to accomplish many of the same goals and objectives that we all share.”Our conversation with Katharine concludes in Episode 11, which posts on June 26. In our final episode of this series, Katharine focuses on inspiring action, how to learn more about climate change, and how to talk about it with others. We hope you enjoy this special series!!For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  •      Jeff King at LinkedIn•      Katharine Hayhoe at LinkedIn 

Katharine Hayhoe is a world-renowned scientist, climate communicator, and passionate advocate for climate equity. She's a climate ambassador whose message is one of hope. She has dedicated her life to motivating action. Every day. In Season 7, Episode 9, host Sarah Thorne and cohost Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature (EWN) Program, US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) are joined by Katharine Hayhoe, Chief Scientist of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) for a conversation on climate change that was so deep, and wide ranging that we're going to break it into 3 episodes.Katharine was born in Toronto, Canada, growing up in a home where science was always front and center. Late in her undergraduate studies in astrophysics, she took a class on climate change, which completely changed her educational path and led to a PhD in atmospheric science. “I found out that climate change affects us all, but it doesn't affect us all equally. I felt if I had the skill set you need to work on this urgent global issue that affects every aspect of our lives on this planet, if I have those abilities and those privileges, I need to be using them to make a difference.”Today, Katharine is Chief Scientist at TNC, where she can live her passion for applied science. TNC has ambitious goals for protection and conservation of freshwater, of land, and of the oceans. In describing the challenges of addressing climate change today, and in particular the social inequities, Katharine notes that “engaging with nature-based solutions not only addresses immediate issues of climate adaptation to heat, it also helps with air pollution, health, and flooding.”Katharine's message is one of hope. “I think of this as the ‘head to heart to hands' gap. In our heads, we know global temperature is rising and humans are responsible. Around the world, the vast majority of people are worried about climate change. In the US over two thirds of people are worried. So, we're really reaching a tipping point in terms of the head, but they don't understand how it affects the people, places and things we love. They haven't made the head to heart connection. They still think of it as a future issue, a distant issue, and something that is not on their priority list. If we don't understand there's a problem that matters to us, why would we want to fix it?”Katharine sees that as only half of the communications challenge. “We could have the whole world worried, but if they don't know what to do about it, they'll do nothing. And that's exactly what we see in the US. Two thirds of people are worried, but only 8% are activated. That's where the hope comes in. The hope is in connecting our heart to our hands. If I do something, could it make a difference?” Through her Newsletter — Talking Climate — and many other channels, Katharine is trying to close these gaps by sharing good news and the actions being taken by people. “Because the number one thing we can do to kickstart and catalyze action is the thing that two thirds of Americans are not doing, and that is we're not talking about it.”In the next episode, Sarah and Jeff talk with Katharine about how she is personally making changes and taking action—and they have a fascinating discussion about the critical role that nature-based solutions play in addressing climate change. Tune in to Season 7, Episode 10 on June 12th.For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  •      Jeff King at LinkedIn•      Katharine Hayhoe at LinkedIn

How do we think about forests and their value? We know that forests store carbon, and with the climate changing, many might think the answer is to just plant more trees. Our guests challenge that conventional wisdom and, as the saying goes, help us see the forest for the trees. In Season 7, Episode 8, host Sarah Thorne and cohost Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature (EWN) Program, US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), are joined by Laurie Wayburn, Cofounder and President of Pacific Forest Trust (PFT), and Nathan Beane, Research Forester in the Environmental Laboratory of the USACE Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC). They're talking about how to sustainably manage forests to make them more resilient. Laurie has dedicated her career to forest conservation and sustainability. She is an innovator, a pioneer, and an authoritative voice on forest practices and policy. Much of Laurie's work at Pacific Forest Trust (PFT) is working with private landowners on conserving forests. “We wanted to work with what I would call the enlightened self-interest of private landowners and make it financially competitive, or even more desirable, to keep their forests as forests, not just as plantations, but to manage them as forests with the full suite of functions.”Nathan is the leading research forester within the US Department of Defense (DoD). As lead of the Forest Ecosystem Dynamics Team at ERDC, his research primarily focuses on forest communities, their function, health, management, and sustainment, and ultimately the creation of “resilient forests.” Nathan's work addresses problems in forested lands on USACE and DoD installations. His on-the-ground research helps to inform a more comprehensive understanding of healthy forest ecosystems and how to improve their management.In their respective roles, both Laurie and Nathan speak for the forests. As Laurie describes it, “When people use the term forestry, what they're typically thinking about is the production of timber or fiber commodities. That phrase, ‘seeing the forest for the trees,' is all too apt because so many people think of forests just as a collection of trees.” She describes forest systems as beginning well below the ground and ending above the canopy with trees being the most visible piece of a storehouse of biodiversity that comprises the forest overall. Nathan agrees, noting, “While forests provide key habitats for a range of wildlife, including threatened endangered species, they also generate oxygen, filter water, provide soil stabilization, carbon sequestration, ecosystem biodiversity, natural disaster mitigation, and flood control.”Laurie has a strong call to action for listeners: “One of the most critical things I hope we can help people think about is forests are essential infrastructure, just as we think about roads or the internet as essential infrastructure. As you go about your daily life, be aware of, and grateful for, the grace and blessing of forests and return the favor. They don't exist without people caring and being involved.”Nathan agrees: “I'm a big advocate for that. I think it's important to highlight that it's critical that we understand the complexity of forests. We have a lot of challenges ahead of us, and I think it's really important that we continue to conduct research in this space. I'm really glad to be a part of the EWN Program that supports this.”For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  •      Jeff King at LinkedIn•      Laurie Wayburn at LinkedIn•      Laurie Wayburn at Pacific Forest Trust•      Nathan Beane at LinkedIn 

Imagine restoring a 51-mile-long concrete river—running through the heart of the Los Angeles Basin in California—into a vibrant corridor reconnecting fractured communities and ecosystems. In Season 7, Episode 7, host Sarah Thorne and cohost Amanda Tritinger from the US Army Corps of Engineers talk with landscape architects Alex Robinson from University of Southern California (USC) and Leslie Dinkin from the Kounkuey Design Initiative in Los Angeles. They discuss the use of storytelling, augmented reality, and physical modeling tools to engage people along the river in cocreating a new future for themselves and for the river.Leslie recently graduated with dual master's degrees in landscape architecture and heritage conservation from USC, studying under Alex and working with him at the Los Angeles River Integrated Design Lab (LA-RIDL).Alex's work is rooted in his personal experiences with the City of Los Angeles (LA) and its infrastructure, including the LA River, and finding out how people spend their days interacting with these interesting landscapes. Fresh out of graduate school in 2005, Alex worked on the Los Angeles River Revitalization Master Plan, one of the first of many plans for the river that tried to bring different values into the thinking about how to transform the river into something more than just an instrument of flood control. He has continued this focus with the realization that, “We were constrained by so many voices and different constituents, all speaking different languages. I thought, what if we could create a platform where we had a more collective understanding, where people could begin to speak the same language and were able to cocreate something.”This led Alex to reach out to the USACE Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), which has hydrology modeling in its toolset. As Amanda notes, “You can see how this just clearly aligns with Engineering with Nature. At ERDC, we have numerical and physical models, but how do we get our models to talk to people? I think Leslie and Alex have done a really great job in not only creating that connection but making it meaningful.”The product of this collaboration with Duncan Bryant, Research Hydraulic Engineer, and his colleagues at ERDC's Coastal Hydraulics Laboratory (CHL), was the development of a physical model of a section of the LA River with adjacent land owned by the city where there is an opportunity for big changes. As Alex explains, “This is the crown-jewel opportunity for changing the LA River.” To take the engagement with the model to the next level and produce something that invites people to participate in the process, Alex and his colleagues developed an augmented reality component to visually overlay information on top of the physical model. “It lets people interact—a community member can come in and make a comment, draw something, and that becomes input an engineer and a landscape architect can consider in their design process.”Thinking about how advanced visualization tools support community engagement, Alex says, “I think the model and all the different tools we've developed have created this incredible common ground for people to have a conversation and have their ideas and values represented in the system.”Amanda truly appreciates the work that Alex and Leslie are doing: “If I could just represent all of engineers for a minute, I'd like to say, thank you. Thank you for helping us communicate.”For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  •      Amanda Tritinger at LinkedIn•      Alexander Robinson at LinkedIn•      Leslie Dinkin at LinkedIn 

Imagine the possibilities if brilliant scientists and engineers could figure out how to use natural materials like silt and clay, dredged from waterways, to make nature-inspired, 3D printed structures like reefs and roots to restore habitat and protect coastal shorelines. In Season 7, Episode 6, host Sarah Thorne is joined by Al Kennedy, Burton Suedel, and Andrew McQueen from the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC). All three are Research Biologists in the Environmental Laboratory at ERDC. They're discussing the 3D printing workshop they hosted in February 2024 to explore the potential of nature-inspired 3D printing. As a special feature of this episode, several of the workshop participants share highlights from the workshop discussions and the inspiration for their future work. The Corps dredges more than 200 million cubic yards of sediment from navigable waterways every year. In Season 5, Episode 6, Lieutenant General Spellman, USACE Commander and Chief of Engineers, spoke about his 70/30 goal–achieving 70% beneficial use of dredged material by 2030. 3D printing can enable new and novel ways to use sediment as a resource and improve the Civil Works' mission delivery, unlocking some of the constraints on traditional infrastructure engineering by using simple bioinspired design, leveraging natural geometries to produce more pleasing recreational uses, improved ecological functionality, plus economic and social benefits.The workshop was a key step in advancing the potential of 3D printing by bringing together a diverse group of experts from government, academia, and the private sector to explore the potential of 3D printing using natural materials. Workshop breakout groups focused on four major research areas:Ecosystem restoration and bioinspired designCoastal resilience and sustainabilitySediment propertiesScaling up  Key discussions and takeaways from the workshop, include: The importance of being more intentional with infrastructure design, incorporating nature-inspired features to leverage optimizations from nature, and delivering multi-functional materials that offer co-benefits like habitat enhancement alongside primary infrastructure objectives.Discussions on the properties of natural materials and their performance in 3D printers, including stability of end products, and the potential need for pre- and post-processing to meet requirements.Exploring and innovating the best applications for 3D printed materials, such as using dredged material from confined disposal facilities (CDFs) for ports and coastal areas, enhancing community resilience with new or rehabilitated infrastructure like berms.The necessity for maturation and scaling up of 3D printing applications, transitioning from lab-scale to larger format printers suitable for field use, encompassing nozzle design and managing available dredge material for use.The potential safety benefits of using 3D printing to automate infrastructure production in hazardous work environments. Synergy, engagement, and collaboration was evident throughout the workshop, and participants expressed a strong interest in continuing the dialogue. A report on the workshop results will be available on the EWN website.For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  Burton Suedel at LinkedInAlan Kennedy at LinkedInAndrew McQueen at LinkedIn

Innovation and collaboration are cornerstones of Engineering With Nature (EWN). Sharing projects, demonstrating outcomes, and inspiring practitioners around the world is an important part of advancing EWN. The EWN Atlas series, initiated in 2018, has been key to showcasing the incredible work happening around the world. Season 7, Episode 5, kicks off the launch of EWN Atlas, Volume 3. Host Sarah Thorne is joined by cohost Burton Suedel, Research Biologist at the Engineer Research and Development Center, USACE, and Zelini Hubbard, Senior Project Manager at Anchor QEA and Project Manager for Atlas 3.The EWN Atlas series demonstrates the power of EWN in action, highlighting projects that exemplify EWN concepts, principles, and practices. Each Atlas is organized in chapters, presenting projects in various environmental contexts—beaches and dunes, wetlands, islands, reefs, riverine systems, and floodplains—as well as chapters on specific project types, such as the use of vegetation and natural materials, and environmental enhancements of existing infrastructure. Sarah spoke with five contributors to Atlas 3 whose projects exemplify the quality of EWN projects being implemented around the world:  Cathy Lear is a Senior Habitat Biologist at Clallam County. The Lower Dungeness River Project she led is in Clallam County, WA. This project incorporated nature-based solutions (NBS) to restore a floodplain. Mary Kate Brown is Assistant Coastal Programs Director for The Nature Conservancy in Alabama. She talks about how the Lightning Point Restoration Project in Bayou La Batre, AL, used green and gray infrastructure to revitalize a culturally important shoreline.  Samantha Belcik is a Biologist and Planner with the Chicago District, USACE. She describes the Fort Sheridan Project in Lake County, IL, which used historical native plant ecotypes and natural processes to restore a coastal ecosystem.  Zoe Elliott Perkins is a Senior Coastal Engineer on the Beaches Team for the City of Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. She was part of the team on the Palm Beach Artificial Reef Project in Palm Beach, Queensland, Australia, which constructed an artificial reef to provide coastal protection and recreational resources.  David Johnston is a Project Engineer and Acting Team Lead in the Waterways Section of the USACE Huntington District. He led the Ohio River Bonanza Bar Project in Portsmouth, OH, which used dredged material beneficially to create ecological habitats and restore the historical footprint.  Burton and Zelini hope Atlas 3 gets wide use. As Zelini notes, “All 58 projects really do provide interesting examples of how NBS are being applied to a broad range of challenges. I think it's a real feat that the work of so many has been distilled down into a digestible and readable document.” Burton agrees, adding, “What we're striving to do is to share best practices worldwide, inspire actions in others, foster the confidence in our collective vision and encourage others to incorporate NBS into their infrastructure projects.” Jeff King, Lead of the EWN Program, notes that: “Atlas 3 really reflects the best of the best work being done by colleagues across USACE and around the world.” Jeff thanks the entire team that worked on Atlas 3, and all the contributors and adds, “I'd like to personally invite all our listeners to check out Atlas 3, and all of the wonderful work being done—it will be available in May 2024. I hope all our listeners and readers will be inspired by the projects we're featuring.” For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  •      Jeff King at LinkedIn•      Burton Suedel at LinkedIn•      Zelini Hubbard at LinkedIn

It's old home week and time to get the original EWN Podcast gang back together. In Season 7, Episode 4, host Sarah Thorne is joined by cohost Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature Program (EWN), and our friend, colleague, and inspiration behind the Engineering With Nature Program, Todd Bridges. Todd is now Professor of Practice in Resilient and Sustainable Systems in the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia (UGA). A lot has happened since February of 2023 when we celebrated Todd's 30-year career with the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), where in addition to being Senior Research Scientist for Environmental Science, he founded and was the first National Lead of the EWN Program. Having taken only a month off after leaving USACE, Todd says that he “failed at retirement. I'm as busy now, if not more so, than I was before. But I think a ‘busy life' is a ‘happy life.'” For Todd, change is inevitable and keeps one energized: “I wouldn't trade the 30 years that I was blessed to have with the Corps of Engineers for anything. It was vastly fulfilling in so many ways, on so many levels. But change is necessary, and I've been enjoying embracing the change and continuing to do whatever I can to make a difference.”We discussed some of the highlights of Todd's busy first 11 months at UGA where he is teaching and advising engineering students about natural infrastructure, and has his first graduate student, Scott Blackstock, a Captain in the US Army who will focus his research on nature-based solutions. Todd is also podcasting at UGA, cohosting the Resilient Futures Podcast with Dr. Alicia Helmrich, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering. The Resilient Futures Podcast focuses on what it takes to create resilience in a variety of different contexts.In addition to his teaching and advising, Todd has continued to spread the word on EWN and nature-based solutions (NBS) in many forums, including: participating in two summits hosted by the White House—the Invest in Nature Summit and the Climate Resilience Summit as well as being selected as one of 11 lead authors on the United States' first National Nature Assessment to lead development of the chapter on “Nature and the Safety and Security of the United States.”Todd continues to be active in the Network for Engineering With Nature (N-EWN), which he cofounded with Brian Bledsoe in 2018. As Todd explains, “Progress runs on the rails of relationships. I'm very encouraged by what I'm seeing in the growth. Today we have more than 25 partners that are committing their own sweat equity to a wide range of N-EWN initiatives.” In February 2024, Todd and Jeff participated in the Policy Forum for Nature-Based Solutions in Washington DC, sponsored by N-EWN and the National Academies' Gulf Research Program. The Policy Forum brought together a diverse array of stakeholders, including policymakers, regulators, practitioners, academics, and others. It provided a platform for rich discussions on the transformative potential of nature-based solutions across various sectors.Jeff and Todd are both energized by the growing acceptance of nature-based solutions. As Jeff notes, “Five years ago, nature-based solutions were not ubiquitous. Today we're constantly talking about NBS, and more and more NBS projects are coming online.” Todd agrees: “There's been a convergence of thinking—an alignment of need and opportunity that we need to capitalize on now if we want to really make a difference for the country and for communities.”  He adds, “The future is very bright for Engineering With Nature.” For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  •  Jeff King at LinkedIn•  Todd Bridges at LinkedIn

Our guest is a scientist and innovator who brings new thinking and new applications of nature-based solutions (NBS) into her work every day. In Season 7, Episode 3, host Sarah Thorne is joined by cohost Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature Program (EWN), and Julie Beagle, Environmental Planning Section Chief for the USACE San Francisco District. Julie joined USACE three years ago desiring to make the biggest impact possible. Jeff notes that, since then, Julie's leadership on EWN has been absolutely outstanding and her passion for NBS to address a whole range of projects in the San Francisco Bay and throughout the district is inspiring. She's moving the needle when it comes to advancing the practice of integrating NBS into project decision-making. Julie began her career as a field scientist working in rivers all day, on a job that let her be outside doing science. As a geomorphologist, she studied how sediment and water shape the surface of the earth. In her early career, she focused on protecting salmonid species in northern California and assisted communities in restoring rivers and explored landscape management strategies to better protect and integrate habitats. Then she worked her way downstream into more engineered flood-control channels working on issues related to water quality and the interaction of land use and development. She notes that, “over the last 15 years, climate change became the driver. I became focused on how landscapes, people, species, and ecosystems are going to adapt to this changed reality.”As Julie describes it, the whole watershed connects. What happens in the upper watershed influences what happens down in the floodplains, tidal marshes, down to the bay and the outer ocean. “It really helped me understand this entire landscape that we have modified and are now having to adapt for all the benefits that we need from our ecosystems and lands. We have to take a landscape approach, and that's why Engineering With Nature really resonates for me.”One of the projects that Julie worked on right before coming to USACE was the San Francisco Bay Shoreline Adaptation Atlas: Working with Nature to Plan for Sea Level Rise Using Operational Landscape Units. This publication helps communities identify different adaptation strategies that take advantage of natural processes. Julie has translated her experience to what she is doing for USACE today with the opportunity to work in different areas and across jurisdictions. “I've been focused on San Francisco Bay for a long time, but I'm really excited about all these other estuaries starting to think about this Adaptation Atlas–type approach. We can help them develop these same types of toolkits and then make that connection to the dredge material that the Army Corps produces across the entire West Coast.”Jeff notes the importance of taking what is being demonstrated in the San Francisco District and replicating it across the country. “What Julie is doing in the San Francisco District has a lot of value. We want to capture that and share the learnings and experiences you're having as an EWN Proving Ground with the rest of the Corps enterprise.” Leveraging her role as the EWN Lead in San Francisco District, Julie's goal is “to make NBS just part of the fabric of the way we do business.” Jeff agrees, “I want this to be something that we use time and time again. NBS should become integrated into all our project decision-making. That is real culture change, and Julie's leadership is a great example.” For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/ • Jeff King at LinkedIn• Julie Beagle at LinkedIn

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are of growing interest in many parts of the world as scientists, engineers, policymakers, and others look for new ways to address climate change challenges. In S7, E2, host Sarah Thorne is joined by EWN cohosts Burton Suedel, and Amanda Tritinger. Their guest is Paul Cruz, Sr. Program Manager in International and Interagency Services in the USACE's Pacific Ocean Division. They're talking about advancing NBS by building relationships with colleagues in the Pacific region.With a military background and experience in planning and security cooperation, Paul describes his work as: “I tell people I went from the 8-crayon box set to the 200-crayon box set with a pencil sharpener on the back, working with all these scientists, engineers, and research personnel on new and exciting topics and capabilities that we bring to the table as we engage our allies and partners all around Asia. And certainly EWN was one of those capabilities.”While assisting the Philippine Navy with dredging efforts for their Navy Bases, Paul met with the Philippine Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). “We took advantage of the opportunity to support their dredging challenges because it was helping facilitate the military side, and we started to see a real growing relationship between the USACE and the DPWH—two agencies that have a lot of the same mission sets.” This led to additional engagements on typhoon recovery and flood control, and reclamation projects with the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources.In March 2023, Amanda participated in a technical exchange hosted by the Taiwan Water Resources Agency (TWRA). Over 100 participants from academia, local and federal agencies, and NGOs took part and expressed a great deal of interest in the knowledge that the USACE and TWRA had to share. As Amanda notes, “We enjoyed participating in the panel. I believe to this day we're applying what we learned and brought home to our respective countries.” Burton followed this up in October 2023, attending the Taiwan International Water Week hosted by TWRA. “It was a great opportunity to share some of our best practices and try to relate them in ways that the next generation of professionals—scientists, biologists, engineers, and other disciplines—can pick up on.”In the Portland District in 2022 and in the Seattle District in 2023, USACE hosted technical exchanges with delegations from the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism (MLIT). Both countries face similar issues in their coastal environments. As Amanda describes it, “I saw a lot was multi-issue problems in Japan with compounding effects—flooding, plus wave action on storm events, and the most subsidence I'd ever seen, plus the risk of volcanic activity. While multibenefit may be seen as nicety for us, for Japan, it's a necessity.”These examples underscore the value of relationships in the Pacific Region. As Paul notes, “From a military perspective, we don't do anything anymore alone. It's always together.” For Burton, “To me, it's mutual learning. I'm always pleasantly surprised how engaged and engaging the participants are and how much progress they have made to incorporate innovative EWN principles and practices into their projects.” Amanda adds: “Building deep relationships that are sustainable is so important. I think to progress the practice and support a sustainable future, we need to engineer with nature, but we need to engineer with humanity too.”For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/ • Amanda Tritinger at LinkedIn• Burton Suedel at LinkedIn• Paul Cruz at LinkedIn

Welcome to a new season of the EWN Podcast! Our guest has a bold vision for natural, holistic land management. He's not just thinking about how water harvesting and land management can complement or even replace traditional water resources engineering, he's putting it into practice. In Season 7, Episode 1, host Sarah Thorne is joined by cohost Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature Program, and Ricardo Aguirre, Director of Land Management and Water Security for WEST Consultants (WEST) in Arizona and Executive Director of the Drylands Alliance for Addressing Water Needs (DAAWN). Ricardo is an engineer, rancher, consultant, and an accredited holistic management professional and educator. He has 25 years of experience working on hydrology, stormwater management, flood control, and groundwater recharge. Ricardo grew up on a cattle ranch and cotton farm in southern Arizona. The farm failed, and his family urged him to get away from agriculture, but his mother sensed that water was going to be the future in the Southwest and recommended he become a water attorney. Instead, he chose civil engineering with a focus on water resources. Following graduation from the University of Arizona, he worked at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in the Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) while completing a master's degree at the University of Illinois. After working in land development, Ricardo's career brought him back to his family's lands but with new perspectives on land management and water use. He started his own firm, Holistic Engineering and Land Management, then joined WEST to pursue his vision for regenerative land management. Regenerative land management, Ricardo explains, “is understanding nature's patterns and working with nature to maintain landforms, specifically in this case, grasslands that do the yeoman's work in the carbon and water cycles.” One of the core principles in this system is the need for megafauna, large livestock such as sheep and cattle. Ricardo says that, “in temperate environments, megafauna prevent forests from moving in on grasslands; and in arid environments, megafauna prevent grasslands from becoming a desert.”To better understand these relationships, Ricardo and WEST have created a demonstration site on land purchased by WEST that used to be part of Ricardo's family's ranch. They are conducting a project to compare the impact of conventional grazing—a small number of animals in a very large area for long periods of time (months to years)—to high-density grazing—a larger number of animals in a very small area for very short periods of time (hours to days). As Ricardo explains, this high-density grazing concentrates and evenly distributes the beneficial animal wastes and the trampling of plants back into the soil to feed beneficial soil organisms. The animals then don't come back to this land until the space is ready to be grazed again.Also, in alignment with the principles of EWN, Ricardo is committed to advancing the practice of working with nature through training. He is an accredited professional with the Savory Institute and trains land managers in holistic management: holistic financial planning, holistic ecological monitoring, holistic land planning, and holistic planned grazing. In 2024, Ricardo will offer training courses through DAAWN, the nonprofit Savory Hub, one of a network of local learning centers affiliated with the Savory Institute that offer services to support local farming, ranching, or pastoralist communities, tailored to their specific needs.For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/ • Jeff King at LinkedIn• Ricardo Aguirre at LinkedIn

It's a new year and we're kicking off a new season of the Engineering With Nature® Podcast! Season 7 launches on January 24. Host Sarah Thorne recently caught up with Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature Program, to discuss highlights from Season 6 and give us a glimpse of what's ahead. The EWN Podcast launched in July 2020, and as Jeff notes, “One of the biggest highlights has certainly been the number of listeners that are coming to our space. For those out there, thank you so much for listening. He adds, “We really appreciate the interest and the support of our listeners from around the world. Everywhere I go—meetings, conferences, workshops—people are listening to our podcast, and they are truly engaged. They love what we're doing. It's incredibly exciting to get that kind of feedback.”Sarah and Jeff review highlights from Season 6—the theme was Expanding the EWN Lattice. The wide array of topics covered included the historic wildfire season in Canada that dramatically affected air quality across Canada and in many US states; the application of nature-based solutions (NBS) in the Boston area to address sea-level rise, reduce flooding, and build coastal resilience; new guidelines for the application of thin-layer placement of dredged materials; the importance of dunes in the coastal environment; preservation of historic, culturally significant St. Croix Island by using NBS; and the science behind the importance of nature to health and well-being. Season 6 featured a broad range of researchers, practitioners, and leaders—scientists, engineers, landscape architects, authors, and others—within the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) other US federal agencies, industry, nongovernmental organizations, First Nations, and others. All focused on innovative approaches to incorporating nature-based solutions into their work and encouraging others to do so. Sarah notes the synergy that continues to build among EWN practitioners, “All of these people are bringing their passion. I hope the work of all the people we've had on our podcast inspires the next generation to really dig in and learn these new techniques and advance the practices of EWN and NBS.” The theme for Season 7 is Continuing the EWN Journey. As Jeff explains, “We want to continue on this journey—keep sharing more of the wonderful topics that come our way and the interesting people we are blessed to get to know on this journey. ‘Continuing the EWN Journey' conveys that. Listeners can expect another impressive lineup of shows in Season 7, including episodes on innovative technologies; government policy related to nature-based solutions; discussions with international practitioners; conversations with leaders from not-for-profit organizations, agency partners, and Engineering With Nature USACE District Proving Grounds; along with coverage of important EWN events. As Sarah says, “So many people are really making a significant contribution to advancing NBS and EWN. We want to share their stories and their passion.” Mark your calendar for the launch of Season 7 on January 24! In Episode 1, we're speaking with Ricardo Aguirre, a rancher, practicing engineer, and educator who's doing groundbreaking work applying EWN-type approaches to land management. He talks about how traditional practices have negatively impacted landscape and soils, particularly with respect to climate change. He is thinking about things differently in terms of holistic water harvesting and land management practices that can be more effective. We hope you'll tune in. Jeff King at LinkedInSarah Thorne at LinkedInDave Trafford at LinkedIn

Can nature make us happier, healthier and more creative? The simple answer is yes … and it's been scientifically proven. In Season 6, Episode 10, hosts Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, Lead of the Engineering With Nature® Program, USACE, welcome Florence Williams, a renowned journalist, author, speaker, and podcaster who spent over three years traveling around the world talking with leading scientists about how to quantify the benefits of nature on people's health and well-being. Florence joins us to talk about her book, The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative, and what she has learned on her journey. As a contributing editor for Outside Magazine, Florence is sometimes assigned stories; but when she was asked to write about the science behind why we feel good in nature, the assignment immediately spoke to her. What started out as a magazine story ended up as a book. In writing The Nature Fix, Florence was motivated by what she calls our “epidemic dislocation from the outdoors,” which involves the shift to moving to cities and simply spending less time outside. Florence notes the growing volume of scientific study in this area. “There's a ton of mounting evidence. When you consider all these different scales and types of studies, it becomes really, really powerful.” Florence likes to “witness the science”. The first stop on her journey was Japan, where a physiological anthropologist, Yoshifumi Miyazaki has been studying “forest bathing”. Florence explains “forest bathing is the idea of being in a nature space, almost like sunbathing.” She notes that after just 15 minutes of sitting in the woods or walking around trails there are significant positive physiological changes on metrics like blood pressure, respiration, heart rate, and hormone levels.On another stop, Florence met with David Strayer, a cognitive neuroscientist. He believed that he got his best ideas after being on the river and became interested in the “three-day effect”—a term coined by a bookseller in Salt Lake City who noticed that some “magic” seems to happen after three days outside. Florence joined Dr. Strayer's class, Cognition in the Wild at the University of Utah, when they went camping in the desert. “It was a helpful way for me to start to frame some of the theories about what's going on in our brains and then of course to experience some of it too by spending three days outside.” When asked about potential learnings for EWN, Florence notes the importance of designing spaces, especially in urban areas, where our senses can come alive in a comfortable way. “When we're in modern life and in our cities, our senses are assaulted in ways that we just accept and don't really think a lot about.” On a trip to Seoul, South Korea, she visited the Cheonggyecheon canal that had been redesigned to be a natural space. “They daylighted it and landscaped it and put trees around this canal. Acoustic engineers came up with water features and a walking path. When you descend into this lovely trail, you don't hear the traffic noise. You hear the sound of water and birds.” Florence believes that these kinds of urban natural spaces should play a significant role in infrastructure projects. Her call to action is this: “We can construct our lives in a way that helps facilitate our mental health; that should be a priority for all of us and for our children and for our neighborhoods. I really encourage people to get involved with their communities, encourage more trees, more playgrounds, more parks, more recess for kids.” For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/ · Jeff King at LinkedIn· Florence Williams – Naturefix at LinkedIn

The USACE dredges more than 200 million cubic yards of sediments every year as part of their mission to ensure that ports and waterways remain open to traffic. In S5E6, we talked with Lt. Gen. Spellman, the 55th Chief of Engineers and the Commanding General of USACE, about his 70/30 goal to increase the beneficial use of these sediment from about 30% up to 70% by the year 2030. Supporting the USACE environmental protection and restoration missions, this ambitious goal calls for innovative uses of sediment. Our guests are advancing the practice of thin layer placement (TLP) through the development of new guidelines based on leading practice applications. In Season 6, Episode 9, hosts Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, Lead of the EWN® Program at USACE, welcome Candice Piercy, Research Environmental Engineer at the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), USACE; Ram Mohan, Senior Principal at Anchor QEA and Adjunct Professor at Texas A&M University; and Monica Chasten, Coastal Engineer and Project Manager in the Philadelphia District, USACE. Candice and Ram coauthored the recently published Guidelines for How to Approach Thin-Layer Placement Projects with their colleague, Tim Welp, a renowned dredging expert who passed away in 2021. Tim was the inspiration behind the guidelines, and this episode is dedicated to him. Monica is an innovator and leading light in the dredging community with responsibilities for keeping open the coastal navigation channels in NJ and Delaware. She was an early adopter of EWN and one of the first movers of beneficial use of dredge materials. TLP is defined as the purposeful placement of thin layers of sediment (e.g., dredged material) in an environmentally acceptable manner to achieve a target elevation or thickness. As Candice explains, “TLP really reflects a different approach where we're purposefully placing the material in relatively thin lifts to accomplish an ecological objective. We're often doing this because the natural process of sediments collecting in our marshes is not sufficient for it to keep up with rising sea levels.” Early in his career, Ram wondered whether dredged material could be used as a resource to improve coastal habitats. TLP essentially consists of spraying dredge material so that it rains down in a very gentle manner. Rom notes, “Whether you place it over a marsh or in a subaquatic habitat, this low stress placement method allows it to gently deposit over the existing bottom, making it very conducive to future recovery within two to three growing seasons.”Monica gets passionate about sediment and doing the right things with it. “Prior to becoming a Project Manager for navigation projects, I was working on beach fill projects for the Corps where every grain of sediment is incredibly valuable. Then I moved into the navigation world in the back bays in NJ where we were basically throwing beautiful sediment away. Looking at all types of sediment and how we could use it innovatively became a mission for me.”Jeff notes, “Sediment is supposed to move and be transported by natural processes in various areas of estuarine systems. When we take it out, we're starving the wetlands. With TLP, these systems are going to be much better off.” Jeff adds that LTG Spellmon's 70/30 goal and the new guidelines are game-changing: “I talk with practitioners all over the country, and I know people have been eagerly awaiting them. They are really going to move the needle.”For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/ • Jeff King at LinkedIn• Candice Piercy at EWN• Ram Mohan at LinkedIn• Monica Chasten at EWN

What happens when a world-renowned landscape architect from Thailand comes to the United States as Designer-in-Residence to work with an award-winning architect whose passion is what he defines as watershed architecture? It has been a year since Season 4, Episode 10 when we first asked that question of our guests, and now it's time for an update. Hosts Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, Lead of the Engineering With Nature® Program at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), welcome back Kotchakorn Voraakhom (“Kotch”), an international member of the American Society of Landscape Architects and founder of Bangkok-based company LANDPROCESS, and Derek Hoeferlin, Chair of the Landscape Architecture program at Washington University in St. Louis. Derek and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts have been hosting Kotch on her year-long appointment as Designer-in-Residence, sponsored by the Pulitzer Arts Foundation.Reflecting on her expectations for her year in St. Louis, Kotch said, “It is like a journey. When you travel into some new place or experience, you're expecting one thing; but when you actually go through it, you run into different things that you were not expecting.” Kotch spent her time learning from the St. Louis community and, as she says, listening to the ecology of the Mississippi River. Kotch taught Derek's students at Washington University, held several workshops with community members, engaged with a range of people from USACE, and talked with people in small towns along the Mississippi who are dealing with perpetual flooding. Her residency has “been a pause to relearn what I have learned. As a practitioner, you want to conquer the world. You want to change the world. But in the end, you just have to let the world change you as well.” As she notes, “Nature has the final word.”Derek relates a similar kind of experience in wanting to change the world, while also being influenced by it. His journey has been a 15-plus-year project to investigate what he calls “watershed architecture” and his interest in how watersheds can reflect a tipping point in time. Derek has been influenced by large-scale climate-related disasters and thinking about what it means to design buildings in that context. “As designers, we look at these larger-scale events and watersheds and what they mean for design decisions. Specifically, how can we engage water better within our design decisions. That's where we are right now with our conversation with the Engineering With Nature Program. We're trying to think of a much more holistic way to bring communities into the next phase of this transformation.” These are some of the themes that Derek addresses in his recently published book, Way Beyond Bigness: The Need for a Watershed Architecture.Jeff notes the inspiration that Derek and Kotch's work together brings, “To be able to address these issues concerning climate change really is going to take us getting to know one another, to understand and appreciate our uniqueness as individuals, but also how do we harmonize as humans. Please keep pursuing and delivering good strategies and good solutions that will help us get past these existential threats. What you both are doing is incredibly inspiring for future landscape architects and others.”For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/ • Jeff King at LinkedIn• Kotchakorn Voraakhom at LinkedIn• Derek Hoeferlin at LinkedIn

If you've ever walked along a beach, you've likely noticed the dunes, the mounds of sand that have been formed by the wind. But have you ever thought about what those dunes do and how important they are? Perhaps not; our guests certainly have. In Season 6, Episode 7, host Sarah Thorne is joined by cohost Amanda Tritinger, Deputy Lead of the Engineering with Nature Program, and her US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) colleagues Duncan Bryant, Research Hydraulic Engineer, and Nick Cohn, Research Oceanographer. All three are affiliated with the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory at the USACE Engineer Research and Development Center. They're passionate about “dune stewardship,” protecting and restoring the dunes that create resilience for coastal communities. As Amanda describes it, “People tend to overlook dunes and the role they play in the defense of our coastlines during hurricane seasons.” Duncan explains that dunes are formed by a combination of sand, wind that shapes the sand into mounds, and vegetation. They're much more complicated than just the mounds of sand we see. Dunes are naturally very dynamic. They can form and grow. They can be eroded. They can shift. Nick adds: “A lot of these storms in the Outer Banks and elsewhere where we have big wind events during storms actually grow dunes pretty substantially, but what we hear in the news all the time is how storms erode dunes. That's why they're so complicated. Sometimes it's just about the details; if there was one foot more of storm surge, that dune would get eroded out. So, we do lots of research both in the field and the laboratory and with models trying to understand what details matter about our prediction of dunes.”Dunes are a critical nature-based solution. As Nick explains, “Dunes serve as a topographic high that prevents high water from flooding people's property and critical infrastructure. And they're a really cost-effective, natural form of infrastructure to prevent flooding. As we get through the end of hurricane season, I think we always try to make the case that dunes are a valuable form of coastal protection that can be put almost anywhere throughout the world, without hard structural solutions.”Amanda underscores the potential value of dunes for coastal resilience: “I think expanding the use of dunes is an exciting prospect. Everybody in the coastal community has some major storm event, some hurricane, that sticks in their mind. For me, it was Hurricanes Matthew and Irma. For both, I was in northeast Florida, and we did forensic studies before and after each of those storms. You could walk up and down the coastline and just see the difference. The communities that had older, more natural dune systems got out almost unscathed, whereas the communities that had newer dunes or no dunes saw a lot more damage after the storms.”Amanda's call to action speaks to her passion as a dune steward: “Understand the dunes. Take the time to learn the dune story. If you go to the beach and you appreciate the water, that magical place where the water meets the land, where we get to touch the rest of the world, know the story of the dune. It provides that ecological benefit. It takes care of the communities behind it. It's dynamic. It's exciting. It's doing its job if it's disappearing and it's doing its job when it builds itself up. Just appreciate the dunes when you're out there. I just think if more people knew the dunes story and told each other about it and knew just how magical that thing they walk over on the way to the beach was, that that would just be a win in itself.” For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/• Amanda Tritinger at LinkedIn• Duncan Bryant at LinkedIn• Nicholas Cohn at ResearchGateThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5872676/advertisement

This episode starts with a story. In 1604, 79 members of an expedition from France, including Samuel de Champlain, came to Saint Croix Island off the shores of Maine and New Brunswick to set up a colony in the new land. They called it l'Acadie—Acadia. Over the severe winter of 1604 to 1605, 35 of the settlers died, likely of scurvy. In the spring, members of the Passamaquoddy Tribe befriended the French survivors and brought them food; and, ultimately, their health improved. In the summer of 1605, the survivors moved the Acadia settlement to Port Royal, Nova Scotia, and the rest is history. The Acadians went on to play an integral part in the histories of Canada, the United States, and France. Today, that 6.5-acre uninhabited island and its very significant history is threatened by high tides, shoreline erosion, powerful winter storms, and more—all exacerbated by climate change.In Season 6, Episode 6, host Sarah Thorne is joined by cohost Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature Program, US Army Corps of Engineers, and the USACE Project Lead for collaboration on the Saint Croix Island activities; Donald Soctomah, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Passamaquoddy Nation; Becky Cole-Will, Chief of Resource Management for Acadia and Saint Croix Island National Parks, US National Park Service; and Amy Hunt, Senior Project Manager at EA Engineering, Science, and Technology, Inc. in New Hampshire. They are working together to figure out how to use nature-based solutions to protect and preserve Saint Croix Island and its unique historical significance. Each of the guests speaks to the unique nature of Saint Croix Island and their personal affinity to it. Donald notes that “Saint Croix has always been a special place, not just for the one winter that the Acadians spent on it but also for the last 15,000 years of Passamaquoddy history.” The guests also note the Island's importance as a symbol of the impacts of climate change. As Donald notes, “When I look at the Island I see a symbol of the change that's going on related to climate. Because right before your eyes, you can see the rising ocean, the erosion, the shrinking of the Island. Every time I look at that Island, I think about climate change and the importance of trying to make other people aware of it.”In June of 2023, the National Park Service hosted a workshop that brought together about 25 participants—biologists, geologists, engineers, planners, policymakers, and Tribal officers—to discuss the challenge and the opportunity and learn more about the history of the Island. The purpose, as Amy describes it, “was to ask the right questions and cast a really wide net then whittle it down to a few specific priorities.” Becky adds, “The first day we spent thinking about what could be done. Then people had an opportunity to get out there and see the Island and say, ‘I get it now.' There was a lot of reality checking and ground truthing that was fascinating to hear.”Jeff appreciated the guests sharing their insights and perspective. He noted that the work is ongoing: “We're just getting started. Brian Davis at the University of Virginia has been working collaboratively with the project partners to come up with designs and renderings that we want to discuss with Donald and the Passamaquoddy Tribe to ensure that we're integrating traditional ecological knowledge along the way. I'm excited about where we're headed and the opportunities this project will offer.” For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/ • Jeff King at LinkedIn• Amy Hunt at LinkedIn• Rebecca Cole-Will at LinkedIn• Donald Soctomah at LinkedInThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5872676/advertisement

As fall gets into full swing, we're kicking off the second half of Season 6 of the EWN Podcast by talking with members of the EWN leadership team about what they've been working on and what's ahead. In Episode 5, host Sarah Thorne is joined by cohost Jeff King, National Lead of the EWN; cohost Amanda Tritinger, Deputy Program Manager, EWN; and Courtney Chambers, Communications Lead, EWN.The summer of 2023 was an unprecedented summer in many ways. As Sarah notes, “Mother Nature certainly demonstrated that climate change is upon us.” Jeff agrees, revisiting the topic Canada's worst wildfire season ever, covered in Season 6, Episode 4, as well as the wildfires that devastated Lahaina, Hawaii. He also talks about the extreme rainfall and flooding in the southwest caused by Tropical Storm Hillary and the extraordinary flooding and devastation caused by Hurricane Idalia to the big bend area of Florida. As Jeff notes, “People in all parts of the US, Canada, and around the world are experiencing the effects of climate change firsthand.” This global wakeup call is challenging and motivating for the EWN Program. Jeff notes that there are 49 active research projects being led by personnel at the USACE Engineer Research and Development Center to address the climate change imperative by integrating nature-based solutions.As Communications Lead, Courtney Chambers is responsible for sharing the incredible work that is going on with EWN. In her discussion with Sarah, Courtney describes some of what she has been doing to support the development and promotion of publications critical to broadening the reach of EWN, including the next volume of the EWN Atlas series, which captures the essence of EWN and nature-based solutions through images. As Courtney notes, “If you've seen Atlas I or II, you know that these books really showcase the potential for EWN and the diversity they can include.” Sarah adds, “You're helping to share the stories of all of the brilliant scientists, engineers, landscape architects, and other collaborators—and the EWN projects that they're working on—to inspire others. It's important work.”Sarah also speaks with Amanda Tritinger. Amanda shares highlights from her recent trip to Taiwan, coordinated with the USACE Pacific Ocean Division (POD). She was invited to talk about opportunities to engineer with nature as part of the information and technology exchange with the Taiwan Water Resource Agency. “The TWRA has a lot of really cool projects. It was exciting to share what EWN has going on but also to learn a lot of what Taiwan has been doing.” Amanda notes that through the POD they have been involved with a lot of opportunities in Southeast Asia with colleagues in Japan and Vietnam. “It's really exciting that the world is a big place and what seems like a problem can be its own solution through the use of natural infrastructure and better understanding the environment around us.”In closing, Jeff notes, “The climate change that we've all been experiencing is really challenging and motivating our EWN colleagues and collaborators to be innovative—to conduct research and field work on a range of projects that can help mitigate the impacts of climate change and help communities adapt and become more resilient. I really look forward to sharing some of the truly groundbreaking work underway on future episodes of the EWN Podcast. I don't think we're going to run out of interesting things to share with our listeners!!”For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/ • Jeff King at LinkedIn• Amanda Tritinger at LinkedIn• Courtney Chambers at LinkedInThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5872676/advertisement

In late June, while preparing for this episode, there were over 500 wildfires burning across Canada. Smoke from the wildfires was affecting millions of Canadians and Americans across a wide swath of North America with air quality indexes reaching extreme levels. As of the posting of this episode (July 25, 2023), the number of wildfires burning across Canada had grown to over 1000 with 660 classified as “out of control”. Our timing to have a conversation about wildfires with a prominent Canadian scientist could not have been more relevant. In Season 6, Episode 4, host Sarah Thorne is joined by cohost Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature Program, US Army Corps of Engineers, and Anabela Bonada, Manager and Research Associate at the Intact Centre for Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. Among other things, Anabela is an expert in forest fires and has been actively involved developing a user-friendly guide for residents to simplify the recommendations in Canada's National Wildfire Guide. Canada's wildfire season started early this year. Anabela puts the current situation into context: “The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center reports that [as of July 5] over 85,000 square kilometers, or almost 33,000 square miles have been burned so far. This is equivalent to a little bit more than New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, in Canada, combined or a little bit bigger than South Carolina in the US. This is already the worst wildfire season on record for Canada.” She notes that with climate change, drier and warmer seasons are expected going forward in Canada and the US, particularly in an El Niño year. “For North America, it means that we're going to see drier, warmer climate in the West and Northwest, areas that are usually wildfire prone, and parts of Canada. The expectation is more wildfires—in size and intensity.”There's a lot of work underway in Canada to raise awareness about wildfires and to make communities more resilient. The Intact Centre, in collaboration with FireSmart Canada, has developed easy to follow guidance for homeowners and for communities to get ahead of wildfire risks. As Anabela notes, “There are things that you can do around your home, from simple, moving any combustible material 10 meters (about 33 feet) away from your home, to more complex, like considering a Class A roof that is resistant to wildfire.”Anabela goes on to note that a more nature-based solution is to focus on changing the natural drivers that lead to extreme wildfires rather than fighting the fires after they have started. “So, our focus needs to shift from suppression to prevention as we consider nature-based solutions to wildfire.” Anabela's call to action with regards to wildfires is, “We need to take action, now—all the way from policymakers right down to every individual.”Jeff agrees and adds: “I am thinking about collaboration and the fact that wildfires really don't respect borders. What can we be doing now and in the future? I want to think about what kind of collaborative research is needed and how we pursue that—including how natural infrastructure and nature-based solutions can be used in advance of a wildfire event but also following wildfire events.” For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/ • Jeff King at LinkedIn• Anabela Bonada at LinkedInThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5872676/advertisement

“The Ocean holds the keys to an equitable and sustainable planet. Join the revolution to unlock innovative ocean science solutions.” That is the opportunity and challenge posed by the Ocean Decade, the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030). Launched in January 2021, the Ocean Decade provides a convening framework for a wide range of stakeholders across the world to engage and collaborate outside their traditional communities to trigger nothing less than a revolution in ocean science. This is clearly a topic to explore on the Engineering With Nature® Podcast. In Season 6, Episode 3, host Sarah Thorne is joined by cohost Amanda Tritinger, Research Hydraulics Engineer in the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory of the Engineer Research and Development Center, US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Amanda was recently named Deputy Program Manager for EWN. Together they welcome Courtney McGeachy, Director of the Ocean Visions – UN Decade Collaborative Center for Ocean-Climate Solutions. Amanda and Courtney recently met at the State of the Coast Conference in Louisiana where they were on a couple of panels together, including one discussing nature-based solutions (NBS). Amanda thought Courtney would be an inspiring guest, and she certainly was. The Ocean Visions – UN Decade Collaborative Center is a partnership with Ocean Visions, Georgia Tech, and the Georgia Aquarium. Courtney describes Ocean Visions as a nonprofit startup focused on innovations and solutions for the fight against climate change. The UN's Ocean Decade is designed to take us from “the ocean we have to the ocean we want.” The Ocean Decade has seven desired “Ocean Outcomes,” including a clean ocean, a healthy and resilient ocean, a productive ocean, a predicted ocean, a safe ocean, an accessible ocean, and an inspiring and engaging ocean. “I think these are all important because they touch on not only everything that we need from a scientific lens but also what we need from a personal and community lens. There's no point in making the ocean safe and healthy if it's not accessible to all of us.”Courtney notes that there are a lot of different opportunities when it comes to nature-based solutions. “We want to make sure that we are creating opportunities to leverage these nature-based solutions to help fight climate change. I think Jane Lubchenco said it best. We were sort of trying to change the narrative from the ocean being a victim to the ocean being a solution to help us fight climate change.”In closing, Courtney summarizes her “call to action” for policy and decision makers. “Give innovations and solutions a fighting chance. With every solution, there are risks and side effects. So, I encourage policymakers to think of the ocean and climate crisis as a public health crisis because they're quite similar. I would also encourage policymakers to find the resources. Step up to the plate financially.”Amanda's call to action is to not put solutions into a box—consider this OR that. “Why not both?The huge takeaway from this conversation is that there are cobenefits. There's a toolbox—a suite of tools—there's no reason we can't combine them. There's redundancy in our resilient solutions that work together and, while protecting our communities, can also protect our citizens while helping to protect our ocean, which is our incredible resource that we might taking for granted right now.”For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/ • Amanda Tritinger at LinkedIn• Courtney McGeachy at LinkedInThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5872676/advertisement

The City of Boston is experiencing climate change and taking action to build urban resiliency through their Climate Ready Boston initiative. In Season 6, Episode 2 of the EWN® Podcast, Host Sarah Thorne is joined by Co-host Andrew McQueen, Research Biologist in the Environmental Laboratory of the Engineer Research and Development Center, USACE, and Joe Christo, Managing Director of the Stone Living Lab in Boston, Massachusetts. Both are passionate about integrating nature-based solutions (NBS) into resilience projects to help address coastal and inland flooding in Boston and beyond. Stone Living Lab's mission is to conduct transformative research and outreach to make vulnerable regions adaptive to climate change while enhancing natural and built environments. Andrew and Joe first started working together at the Stone Living Lab's first in-person conference, Nature-Based Coastal Resilience in Urban Settings, held in Boston, MA from April 26-28, 2023 where Jeff King, EWN National Lead, and Andrew served as Conference Committee Members. The conference brought together top experts from academia, industry, government, and environmental consulting firms to have meaningful discussions and exchange ideas on the latest advancements in using NBS to address climate change risks and sea-level rise in coastal urban environments. Andrew describes the nexus between critical infrastructure and the risk associated with coastal hazards: “We have this risk to deal with and one of the big questions is how do we buy down that risk? What opportunities do we have to manage our infrastructure, manage these environments, to offset that risk?” Storm surge associated with sea level rise and climate change is an area of focus for both USACE and the Stone Living Lab. Joe talks about the imperative to build coastal resilience: “Climate change is, and will continue to increase coastal and riverine flooding, as well as other hazards like storm water flooding and extreme heat. With Hurricane Sandy, having barely missed Boston, the city knew it needed to prepare for more events like this, and for climate change. Climate Ready Boston was launched in 2016, covering a range of climate hazards and vulnerability assessments, looking at exactly what can be done throughout the city, working with community groups and residents and consultants. It has resulted in these Coastal Resilience Solutions reports that cover the 47 miles of coastline and really looks at how the people and neighborhoods of Boston can adapt.” Andrew and Joe are both very positive about the outcome of the recent conference and optimistic about the opportunities for continuing their collaboration. As Andrew puts it, “One thing I observed during the conference was the immense diversity of technical backgrounds, which I thought was extremely interesting. I think everything that we're working on with nature-based solutions is inherently multidisciplinary. We need everyone sitting at the table to talk through these issues. The Stone Living Lab conference was a perfect venue. The momentum that's growing for nature-based solutions is particularly exciting.” Joe adds, “It's so important to avoid the doom and gloom that can come with working on climate change and instead focus on the opportunities and the positivity, and really embrace the way that we're all trying to work together on these challenges. It was so nice to be able to come together in person and just learn from colleagues and share ideas about how to collaboratively do this work in positive ways.” For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/ • Andrew McQueen at LinkedIn• Joe Christo at LinkedInThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5872676/advertisement

The theme for Season 6 of the EWN Podcast is “Expanding the EWN Lattice.” Host Sarah Thorne is joined by Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature Program, to discuss his new role as the EWN National Lead, his vision for EWN, and what's ahead for 2023. Jeff says he was thinking about the growth of crystal structures—like ice crystals—that grow in three-dimensional, symmetric patterns. It is a metaphor for how he sees the EWN Program growing, expanding in a structured way, interconnecting in a specific manner.“When I think about building out all the elements that support and enable expansion of nature-based solutions—really it's the people, it's the projects, it's the policies that determine what can and can't be done, and it's also the geography.” He adds, “So highlighting all these pieces and how they fit and intertwine so completely to form a lattice is the focus of this season of the Podcast. We'll highlight innovative EWN topics and nature-based solutions.” Sarah notes that, while the theme was intriguing, “it may be a bit geeky.” But it accurately reflects where EWN is going: “It's growing in a very holistic way. The projects are larger, more complex, with many more partners and collaborators, and working with people at the community level. It's a good picture and theme for Season 6.” Collaboration is key to Jeff's vision for EWN. The partners in the Network for Engineering With Nature (N-EWN) are making significant contributions to the advancement and integration of nature-based solutions (NBS) for resilience strategies. “We want to continue to build on, grow, and enhance those connections and the added value they bring, not just for the EWN Program, but for all who want to see NBS prioritized as an additional tool in the toolbox for resilience.”As Jeff notes, having a unified approach to NBS across federal agencies is a key priority of this Administration. And with increasing opportunities to incorporate EWN into future projects, communities are eager to be actively involved. “Communities and stakeholders want to see NBS as part of an overall strategy for creating resilience, while creating additional value for their communities, whether it is social benefits or environmental benefits.” Jeff adds that Season 6 will also feature some of the exciting work being done on the military side of the Corps's portfolio. “We're working with more than 17 different installations around the country to have NBS included as part of their resilience strategies. We're talking about the opportunity to create system-scale resilience inside and outside the fence line.” Jeff's vision for EWN revolves around a large team dedicated to advancing the principles of EWN. Currently the EWN portfolio comprises over 60 active R&D projects, marking the highest number in EWN history.Leading each of those projects is a principal investigator who is working with his or her team to deliver the products that advances practice and understanding of NBS. “Part of my vision is to open that aperture larger and bring those individuals into this Podcast to share their stories and offer highlights of what's been happening with their research.” He adds, “To accelerate the adoption of EWN, we need a much larger network and people that are all rowing in the same direction.That's where “Expanding the EWN Lattice” really comes into play. We want to harness that energy across the large, multidisciplinary team representing a broad range of organizations that are really moving the needle in this space. That to me is doable and we will accomplish it.” For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/ • Jeff King at LinkedIn• Sarah Thorne at LinkedInThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5872676/advertisement

Get ready for an exciting new season of the Engineering With Nature Podcast! Season 6 of the Engineering With Nature® Podcast launches on June 14. Host Sarah Thorne recently caught up with Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature Program, to discuss highlights from Season 5 and give us a glimpse of what's ahead. The EWN Podcast launched in July 2020. With over 35,000 downloads to date, there's a lot of interest in the topics discussed. As Jeff notes, “I just can't believe the success we've seen in Season 5. When we kicked off Season 5, we had just over 24,000 downloads; and now as we kick off Season 6, we are over 34,000 downloads.” He adds, “I receive so much positive feedback from our listeners. Everywhere I go, people want to talk about the podcast. So, I know the EWN Podcast is reaching a lot of people out there, and we want to continue to do that.” Season 5 featured a broad range of EWN practitioners and leaders—scientists, engineers, policymakers, and others—within USACE, other US federal agencies, academia, industry, and nongovernmental organizations. All focused on innovative approaches to incorporating nature-based solutions into their work and encouraging others to do so. Sarah and Jeff review highlights from Season 5 episodes, and note that it was a particular privilege to have Lt. Gen. Spellmon, 55th Chief of Engineers and the Commanding General of the US Army Corps of Engineers, as a guest on Episode 6. His leadership, vision, and insights on innovation and partnerships and thoughts for the future were truly inspirational. Sarah and Jeff also discuss the significant transition within the EWN Program with the retirement of Todd Bridges, the former National Lead for EWN. As Jeff describes, “We celebrated the retirement of a very close friend and colleague Dr. Todd Bridges, who retired at the end of February. We did a special episode, Episode 7, where we asked Todd to offer his thoughts on being in this role for such a long period of time. It was certainly inspirational, and he is definitely a visionary leader for Engineering With Nature.” Sarah concurs, adding, “It was my pleasure to work with Todd for the past 15 years, including on the initial development of EWN. Under Todd's leadership, Engineering With Nature was initiated in 2010 as a little project on the side of the desk, and now it's a global movement.” Season 6 continues discussions of EWN and the application of nature-based solutions under the theme of Expanding the EWN Lattice. As Jeff explains, “I really am excited about having a new season to tee up, where we can really explore a lot of diverse topics.” Drawing inspiration from the three-dimensional nature of a crystal, he aims to expand the lattice of Engineering With Nature, considering all the interconnected facets, such as people, policies, research, and landscapes. Together, these elements create a larger, more encompassing feature that is EWN. Expect an impressive lineup of guests in Season 6, including scientists, engineers, landscape architects, government leaders, industry professionals, and representatives from First Nations. Each guest will offer unique perspectives on what's happening in their respective fields, the opportunities they see, and what it all means for Engineering With Nature. The Season will kick off with Episode 1, featuring an in-depth discussion with Jeff about his passion and vision for Engineering With Nature as the new National Lead. Mark your calendar for the launch of Season 6 on June 14! We hope you'll tune in. For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/ Related Links • Jeff King at LinkedIn • Sarah Thorne at LinkedInThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5872676/advertisement

Climate change is increasing coastal hazards and putting people who live and work in coastal communities at risk. Host Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature® Program, welcome back Mike Beck, Director of the new Center for Coastal Climate Resilience at the University of California in Santa Cruz. Mike was a guest on Season 1, Episode 6. Mike is actively working to understand the role that ecosystems play in providing natural defenses for both people and property. By combining innovative nature-based solutions with insurance incentives, he hopes to significantly increase coastal resilience.   The State of California recently invested $20 million into UC Santa Cruz to establish the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience. As Mike says, “Climate change is no longer a ‘future' problem. It's a ‘here and now' problem. So, the State Legislature is investing in actions toward solutions that we need to be able to adapt and build resilience to these changes.” Mike notes that the Center is committed to a diverse approach, focusing both on nature-based solutions and on underserved communities. “A couple of things that we hope will really set the Center apart are that, even though we are university based, we are very solutions oriented. We really need to think about ways to understand the risks that some of these underserved communities are facing.”   As Mike described in his previous appearance on the EWN Podcast, there is a positive symbiotic link between nature and insurance. Natural features can provide protection against insured property damages from storm surges, and incentives in insurance policies can encourage property owners to build and sustain such natural features. He expands on that concept in this episode by describing the larger roles of nature and insurance in helping to build more resilient communities, noting that reefs and wetlands reduce waves and storm surge, thereby reducing the amount of flooding and erosion.   The need to reduce risk was the impetus for the recent Coastal Climate Resilience Symposium, a collaboration between UC Santa Cruz, the California Ocean Science Trust, the California Department of Insurance, and the Engineering With Nature Program. Held at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center at UC Santa Cruz, the symposium brought together coastal scientists, insurance industry experts, and representatives of state and federal agencies. As Mike describes it, “The purpose of the symposium was to get these diverse thinkers together to talk about how we reduce risks for these communities using both nature and insurance.” Jeff adds, “The idea of public-private partnerships figures into the equation for success. We can have government and the private sector working together to advance the development of infrastructure—in this case, having the insurance industry investing in natural infrastructure features that provide some degree of risk reduction.”   Mike and the Center have formally joined the Network for Engineering With Nature (N-EWN). As Jeff says, “This expands our long-time collaboration with Mike and gives him and his team, along with his students, the opportunity to collaborate with the other diverse member organizations. Having Mike there to offer his perspective, his knowledge, and be able to teach and inspire the next generation of engineers and scientists is just fantastic.”   For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/   Related Links •      Jeff King at LinkedIn •      Mike Beck at LinkedIn

Coastal ecosystems provide an essential part of the solution to global climate change, along with along with providing other benefits such as wildlife habitat and shoreline protection. Carbon that's stored in coastal and marine ecosystems, is called “blue carbon”. We're talking with leading scientists about their foundational research into how blue carbon is helping to address climate change. Hosts Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature® Program, are joined by Lisa Chambers, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Central Florida; Jenny Davis, Research Ecologist with the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS), in the Beaufort Lab, Marine Spatial Ecology Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); and Jacob Berkowitz, a Research Soil Scientist and Lead of the Wetland Team with the Engineer Research Development Center (ERDC), US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE).   As Lisa explains, blue carbon refers to carbon stored in coastal marshes, mangroves, and seagrasses. The “blue” term differentiates it from carbon stored in other ecosystems such as terrestrial forests. Lisa notes that coastal ecosystems actually sequester significantly more carbon than most terrestrial forests. And importantly, they store it for long periods of time below the ground in the soils.   Restoring these ecosystems and protecting these old stores of carbon is critical. Jenny explains: “When we take core samples down in those deep marsh sediments, in some cases, it's 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. It's important to think about how long it took to build that store of rich carbon and if you lose it, how long it's going to take to replace it. It's really important to preserve it.”   There's increasing interest by the US Department of the Defense (DoD) and across US federal agencies in understanding carbon dynamics and identifying opportunities to increase the sequestration of carbon. As Jacob explains, he and Lisa were asked by the EWN Program to investigate blue carbon within the context of the Corps's ecosystem restoration and navigation programs, including beneficial use of dredge material to restore and create coastal habitats. “We've been looking at blue carbon within an applied research context to see where opportunities exist to maximize the storage of carbon within these coastal systems.”   This research is important, because as Jeff notes, it links to EWN's objective of creating environmental and social benefits, in addition to the Corps' navigation-related mission objectives. “On average, USACE produces about 200 million cubic yards of dredge sediment every year. The idea that we could use this dredge sediment to out-compete sea level rise and replenish salt marsh systems while increasing the potential to sequester carbon is a very good thing. I'm really excited about this work.”   “Whenever we can get USACE and NOAA collaborating on these kinds of topics, it really does accelerate our understanding of these complex systems and processes,” Jeff says. The goal is that this foundational research Jenny, Jacob, and Lisa are conducting will ultimately lead to actionable beneficial use of sediments guidance for practitioners in the field. Jeff adds, “Everybody's thinking about this, and we're seeing entities like Department of the Navy or Army including blue carbon or carbon sequestration in their climate-action strategies and plans.”   For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/     Related Links •      Jeff King at LinkedIn •      Lisa Chambers at UCF •      Jenny Davis at NCCOS •      Jacob Berkowitz at ResearchGate  

Over 40% of Americans—that's 130 million people—live along the coasts of the United States. That high concentration of people is putting a lot of pressure on sensitive coastal ecosystems. Host Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, the new National Lead of the Engineering With Nature® Program, are joined by Daniel Hayden, President and CEO of Restore America's Estuaries (RAE). RAE, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to protecting and restoring bays and estuaries along the coasts, has a bold vision for the future where EWN and nature-based solutions play a critical role.   RAE was founded in 1995, in part to bring together the coastal restoration conservation community. Starting with 10 members, the organization has grown significantly. In December 2022, RAE held its 11th Coastal and Estuarine Summit in New Orleans. With over 1300 attendees representing a broad spectrum of individuals and organizations that work in coastal restoration and protection, this shows the growing interest in protecting and restoring our coasts.   An estuary is a place where one body of water meets another, typically a river into a bay or ocean, or a river into a large lake. The East, West, and Gulf Coasts are all home to estuaries, as well as the Great Lakes region. As Daniel describes, “These areas play a critical role in flood and storm surge protection, as well as ecological functions, such as providing habitat for fish and wildlife.”   Daniel joined RAE in 2020, with a commitment to move the organization forward on its 2019 Strategic Plan while building support for increased funding for conservation and getting more people involved in protecting and restoring estuaries. Personally, he wanted to create a platform for thought leadership. “There's a lot of different benefits we can communicate about, and that's really exciting because we can bring many different communities together around something that's very important.”   Environmental justice, social equity, and community empowerment are at the forefront of RAE's work. Daniel discusses RAE's responsiblity to ensure that positive investments go into underrepresented and underserved communities. Jeff notes how RAE's focus aligns with EWN and the Biden Administration's Justice 40 Initiative: “The federal government has made it a goal that 40% of overall benefits of federal investments will flow towards disadvantaged, marginalized communities for things like clean energy and affordable housing, cleaning up areas that have been contaminated over the years, and of course, climate change.”   Looking to the future, the opportunities for RAE and EWN to work together are “tremendous.” “Thinking about the amount of infrastructure that the country needs to maintain, rebuild and expand over the coming decades,” Daniel says, “we really need to be very thoughtful about how we invest. It's not rebuilding what we had but making sure that infrastructure reflects the climate and the economy we want to have for the future.”   Jeff adds, “As we think about climate change and the uncertainty associated with a 10-year or 20-year time horizon, we need to offer communities, stakeholders and decision makers the best available information and tools to make informed decisions. This is an important role for EWN. And, coming back to the RAE Summit, we'll continue to support this incredible venue for sharing best practices and technologies. It is key to advancing nature-based solutions.”   For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/   Related Links •      Jeff King at LinkedIn •      Daniel Hayden at LinkedIn

This very special episode of the EWN Podcast features Todd Bridges, Founder and National Lead of the Engineering With Nature Program. We're celebrating his 30-year career and retirement from the US Army Corps of Engineers (on February 28, 2023), and discussing his visionary leadership of EWN and what's up next for him. Host Sarah Thorne is joined by Dave Trafford, Producer of the EWN Podcast, and Chief Executive Producer, Story Studio Network.   Sarah opens by sharing about her long collaboration with Todd: “Todd, I've had the opportunity to work with you the past 15 years—literally half of your career. It's been a tremendous opportunity for me both personally and professionally; and for that, I truly thank you. I've sure learned a lot. It's been really inspirational, watching you follow your passion and seeing the tremendous accomplishments that you've had with EWN and on so many other fronts.”   Reflecting on his 30-year journey with the Corps, Todd says: “What resonates most with me are my reflections of and gratitude for the people that I've had an opportunity to meet, develop relationships and work with, on meaningful topics. It's a personal hobby of mine to collect people's stories, and I have a rich treasure box of stories about people that I've met and interacted with and enjoyed over the last 30 years.”   Todd began his career in, as he says, “a very pragmatic way”. While completing his doctoral work at North Carolina State University and needing a job to support his family and expectant wife, he received a hand addressed envelope with a job announcement from the Waterways Experiment Station (the predecessor of the today's Engineer Research and Development Center [ERDC]). “I frankly admit that I had no idea what the Army Corps of Engineers was. I read through this job announcement, and I had a passing thought that somebody was playing a practical joke on me because the description of what they were looking for was exactly in alignment with what I had been doing my doctoral research on. I called them. I applied for a job, and the rest is history.”   Todd is recognized for his passion for his work. As he says, “It's so important to be invested in what you're doing, and you can't manufacture it. There's no artificial source for it. What you're good at, and where you can make a difference, is very strongly associated with what moves you personally. For me, this area of work—humanity's relationship with nature—is motivating for me on so many levels.”   Looking to the future of EWN, Todd is optimistic and confident that EWN is in good hands. “As I've said before, the future for Engineering With Nature is bright. The reason is a combination of many things, but one of the fundamental reasons is that the team is strong, within the Corps and with our partners and stakeholders. They are well positioned to move forward and make great progress. I look forward to observing and contributing to that as I can. I'm just so impressed by the team members across our organization, including Jeff King who takes over as Lead of the EWN Program. I've sometimes said he's my right hand, but that's quite inadequate. I could say he's my right side. I'm looking forward to watching him take EWN to the next level.”   After taking what he calls a “breather month”, Todd will become a professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia. “I'm very much looking forward to having the opportunity to work with people and organizations across the country and around the world that want to move forward and to make progress in this area of work. And I'm really looking forward to spending time and effort investing in the next generation.”   For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/   Related Links •      Todd Bridges at LinkedIn •      Sarah Thorne at LinkedIn •      Dave Trafford at LinkedIn

In this episode, Lieutenant General Scott Spellmon joins Todd Bridges, Senior Research Scientist for Environmental Science and National Lead for the Engineering With Nature (EWN) Program, and host, Sarah Thorne, as their special guest. Lt. Gen. Spellmon is the 55th Chief of Engineers and the Commanding General of the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). We're discussing the role of EWN, the importance of innovation, partnerships, and the General's perspective on priorities for the future.   Lt. Gen. Spellmon opened the conversation by emphasizing the importance of EWN and thanking Todd for his leadership: “It's important to all of us, not just us within the Army Corps of Engineers but certainly with our many partners, our elected leaders, and, frankly, the American people who live, work, and recreate on the water. They all want to see us succeed as we continue to endeavor to engineer more with nature in everything that we do across our great country. I have committed to this in congressional testimony, and I'll just say it upfront—we've got to do more of this in our projects and in our programs. A personal thank you, Todd, for your great leadership in working to help us advance EWN across the Corps.” As the top leader of USACE, Spellmon notes the challenges USACE faces due to increased demand and explosive growth—USACE has gone from being a $20 billion program historically to now over a $90 billion program. “That massive program, that massive workload, is our number one challenge but also our number one opportunity. We really have to be innovative in taking the team that we have today that was structured for that $20 billion program and transforming it into one that can deliver on a $90-plus billion program. And innovation is key, thinking about things differently and executing them differently out in the field. There are so many opportunities with EWN that are going to help us get after this challenge.” A challenge that both Spellmon and Bridges have encountered is the perception that EWN is an alternative to traditional engineering approaches. As Spellmon notes, “One of the challenges that we have within the Corps is that too many folks have the mindset that we're advocating for EWN as a substitute for [traditional] engineering solutions, and that's not what we're saying. EWN compliments our engineered solutions. We have to find those cases where we can really get some complimentary effects—multiple benefits to our engineering designs.” Todd adds, “We need to get past the nature or engineering paradigm. It's a false choice—either this or that. It's finding the balance and the combination and for us to be more explicit about how nature contributes to the value of our overall system in terms of the benefits to engineering and economics, but also the social resilience that our communities need, as well as the environmental resilience.”   As we wrap up the episode, Spellmon talks about building the US Army Corps of Engineers of the future. He focuses in on diversity of thought: “We have so many projects across this country and project delivery teams working where we don't look like the communities in which we work. Now we have the data to support our workforce demographics, so we are actively working to increase the diversity of thought within the organization because I think diversity of thought is going to bring this organization into the future.”   For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/   Related Links •      Todd Bridges at EWN •      Todd Bridges at LinkedIn •      LTG Spellmon at LinkedIn •      LTG Spellmon at USACE  

 The Network for Engineering With Nature (N-EWN), introduced in Season 1, Episode 10, is a community of researchers, practitioners, and educators who are working together to advance the practice of Engineering With Nature (EWN). In this episode we're talking with N-EWN's visionary leadership about what's been accomplished and what lies ahead. Host Sarah Thorne and Todd Bridges, National Lead of the EWN Program, welcome back Brian Bledsoe, Director of the Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems (IRIS) at the University of Georgia, and our guests, Ellen Herbert, Senior Scientist, Sustainability and Nature-Based Solutions with Ducks Unlimited, and Chris Mack, Principal, Coastal Engineering Lead and Regional Coastal Solutions Director with Stantec.    There has been a significant amount of progress with N-EWN since it was initiated in October of 2020. N-EWN currently has 30 researchers involved in its initiatives; dozens of projects underway; and many new partners, including Ducks Unlimited and Stantec. Bringing academia, government, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector into the Network has been critical to N-EWN's success. These public-private relationships and partnerships are decreasing the lag time from R&D to practice for nature-based solutions. As Todd notes, “It's great to see the Network expanding. It's very encouraging and inspiring when you look at the organizations, their depth of experience, and what they bring to the game. When you combine all that with EWN, we can really make progress.”   When N-EWN was first introduced in S1 E10, Todd suggested that the objective was nothing short of a revolution, “The revolution is going quite well. We've expanded our communications very significantly, sharing, networking across the Corps through our EWN Practice Leads and our EWN Cadre practitioners across the country. N-EWN plays an important role in this advancement.”    Brian highlights the significant progress being made in the academic sector. “We've got academic partners in all the major biomes across the US. We've made some good progress setting up a long-term network of test beds. We hosted a National Academies workshop on infrastructure that was really inspiring. There's a lot of synergy among the academic partners and the private-sector partners in terms of developing training and upskilling opportunities.”    Ellen adds that “Multisectoral collaboration has allowed us to have a common vocabulary across federal, state, and NGO partnerships. My grandest hope for is that we can get to a place with lots of discussion and plenty of robust science so we can really put nature-based features and natural infrastructure on the same level playing field as traditional gray infrastructure.”   Chris notes how things have changed since his early career when he was working for the Corps. “What you've historically studied is brick, steel—hard, rigid structures that can resist a particular force. But with the blending of the network of biologists, ecologists, and other disciplines, we're asking, ‘Hey, did you know we can solve the same challenge using natural and nature-based solutions?'”    Todd feels that there is a growing acceptance that change is needed. “Combining the collective experience of a diverse network of committed organizations is the way we accomplish that acceleration and practice—that's the value of N-EWN.”   For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/    Related Links Todd Bridges at LinkedIn Brian Bledsoe at LinkedIn Ellen Herbert at LinkedIn Chris Mack at LinkedIn

How do we measure what's most important to us? And how do we translate those values into decisions about infrastructure projects so that they can deliver a diverse set of economic, environmental, and social benefits? That's the focus of our discussion in Season 5, Episode 4, of the Engineering With Nature® Podcast. Host Sarah Thorne and Todd Bridges, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature (EWN) Program, are pleased to welcome back to the podcast Justin Ehrenwerth, President and CEO of The Water Institute. In this episode, we're talking about how to measure what matters with respect to natural infrastructure.   This episode is the third in a three-part series covering what Todd characterizes as the three-legged stool that supports the advancement of NBS. The first leg—identifying opportunities for making progress with NBS—was the subject of Season 5, Episode 2. The second leg—understanding the benefits and value of nature—was the subject of Season 5, Episode 3. The third leg—determining how to measure the value of NBS in infrastructure projects—is the focus of Episode 4.   This episode was recorded shortly after the national summit “Measuring What Matters” hosted by the Resilient America Program at the National Academies in Washington, DC, on November 30, 2022, in collaboration with the EWN Program and The Water Institute. Participants from a broad range of organizations came together to share their perspectives on the process and benefit of valuing nature.   Measuring and promoting nature-based solutions is a challenge. As Todd says, “How do we identify the full suite of benefits that nature-based solutions can bring to an infrastructure project? Getting nature up front in the process of planning and design involves elevating the benefits of nature, moving consideration of those benefits forward in the project development process. It's critical to bring this understanding into the process of project design, accepting nature as a part of the solution.”   Addressing the challenge of measuring these benefits includes new policy research, including exploring the implications of policy alternatives that focus on what and how measurement of benefits is being incorporated into the planning process. Justin summarizes the desired outcome: “The bottom line is to make very clear in the evaluation process that a holistic appreciation of a series of benefits and costs—over and above economics—really has the opportunity to transform. And we've got great science to support that transformation, and momentum. If we harness all this interest and enthusiasm, we will see some big changes in the next 18–24 months.”   Todd adds, “How you define what is a relevant value or benefit when you are developing a project informs very substantively what constitutes a solution within that project. So, what you recognize as a ‘benefit' basically determines the outcome. That's the reason why we're doing all this. To produce better projects that last and that produce the array of benefits that our communities need and deserve. I am excited about what we can produce together.”   For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/     Related Links Todd Bridges at LinkedIn Justin Ehrenwerth at LinkedIn

 We often hear of the plight of the polar bear or how monarch butterflies are dwindling. These changes are important, but just a small part of what's happening with nature in America. Imagine if we had a full picture of nature in our nation—and what nature provides to our lives. And imagine if that picture was at the center of governmental decision-making. Sound utopian? Well, perhaps not. The first ever National Nature Assessment (NNA) is currently underway to better understand how nature is faring in the United States and what it means to all our lives. That's the focus of our discussion in Season 5, Episode 3, of the Engineering With Nature® Podcast.    Host Sarah Thorne and Todd Bridges, National Lead of the EWN Program, are pleased to welcome back Heather Tallis, the Assistant Director for Biodiversity and Conservation Sciences in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Heather joined us in Season 5, Episode 2 to talk about her role in the development of Opportunities to Accelerate Nature Based Solutions. Heather is also the Acting Director for the National Nature Assessment with the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), the subject of this episode.   President Biden's Executive Order 14072, Strengthening the Nation's Forests, Communities and Local Economies, establishes a number of objectives related to nature-based solutions and EWN. One of the many elements of that Executive Order is a commitment to conduct a National Nature Assessment.    Heather's role as the Acting Director of the NNA is to work with the representatives of the 13 agencies that comprise the USGCRP to produce an assessment that gives a full picture of the state of nature in the United States and how nature matters to people's lives. The assessment of the lands, waters, and wildlife across the nation will explore questions such as: What does nature mean to our economy? How is nature interacting with our physical and mental health? And, what do changes in nature mean for our national security and for environmental justice?    Todd and his colleague Kyle McKay are representing the Department of Defense on the Federal Steering Committee. As Todd notes, “The Department of Defense has about 5,000 installations or so across the country and around the world that occupy 25 million acres of land and water—that's a lot of nature. DoD has many programs and makes many investments in natural resource conservation and is now focused on how nature-based solutions can be deployed to enable comprehensive resilience at their facilities and in the surrounding communities.”   Developing the NNA is a big task that will take place over several years and starts with listening. Heather stresses the importance of the process being open, inclusive, and actionable. An open public comment period is currently underway to gather input from individuals and organizations about what nature means to them. As Heather says, “We truly want to hear from everyone as much as possible. We know there are many different ways to experience nature. Everyone comes from a different way of thinking about nature, different perspectives, and we'd like to hear them all.”    Heather encourages people to sign up for USGCRP's newsletter for updates and to provide input to the NNA. The current public comment period is open through March of 2023.    For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/    Related Links Todd Bridges at LinkedIn Heather Tallis at LinkedIn

 What happens when a nation focuses on addressing the critical challenges posed by climate change by investing in nature? That's what we're talking about in Season 5, Episode 2, of the Engineering With Nature® Podcast. 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 two guests from the White House. Heather Tallis is the Assistant Director for Biodiversity and Conservation Sciences in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Lydia Olander is the Director of Nature-Based Resilience for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Heather and Lydia are two of the three co-chairs of Opportunities to Accelerate Nature Based Solutions, a report to the National Climate Task Force, which was released by the White House November 8, 2022.    Heather and Lydia faced a big challenge and a very tight timeline. On Earth Day, April 22, 2022, President Biden issued Executive Order 14072, Strengthening the Nation's Forests, Communities and Local Economies. Section 4, “Deploying Nature-Based Solutions to Tackle Climate Change and Enhance Resilience,” called for developing an interagency report. Heather, Lydia, and their fellow co-chair, Krystal Laymon (from the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy), were charged with leading the process of engaging key Federal agencies, including the US Army Corps of Engineers, to identify opportunities for greater deployment of nature-based solutions (NBS) across the Federal Government, including through potential policy guidance and program change.    Through consultation with agency partners, public roundtables, and Tribal Consultations, Heather, Lydia, and Krystal found that despite a lot of interest, there are real barriers to using nature-based solutions. The breadth of different applications of nature-based solutions underway by Federal agencies can be seen in the Nature-Based Solutions Resource Guide, a companion report that includes 30 examples. Lydia notes that, despite the wide range of Federal agency perspectives and stakeholders included in the consultations, the team identified a set of common themes and challenges, which became the focus of the report.    The Report identifies five strategic areas for action: “Policy,” including permitting, reviews, and cost-benefit analyses; “Funding”; application in “Federal Assets,” including facilities, lands, and waters; building the nature-based solutions “Workforce”; and producing “Evidence” to support effectiveness of NBS based on continuous innovation, learning, and research priorities.   As Todd notes, the timing and the opportunity for this report's recommendations are unpreceded: “We're in a time of important change or evolution in people's thinking about nature. There's a growing awareness that nature and its ecosystems are a foundation, the source and supply, the economy if you will, to address these social and environmental challenges. An increasing number of people from diverse walks of life and professions and communities are committed to making progress on nature-based solutions. In fact, I'd say they're hungry for it. So there's a motivation now that maybe just a few years ago wasn't as well developed.”   For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/    Related Links (links may not be active on all platforms) Todd Bridges at LinkedIn Lydia Olander at LinkedIn Heather Tallis at LinkedIn

Imagine scientists and engineers using 3D printing technology to create nature-inspired structures and to produce more effective, economic, and aesthetically pleasing solutions. In the premier episode of Season 5 of the Engineering With Nature® Podcast, host Sarah Thorne, and Burton Suedel, Research Biologist at the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), are talking with two ERDC colleagues - Alan Kennedy, who is in the risk branch of the Environmental Lab, and Zackery McClelland, who is in the concrete and materials branch of the Geotechnical and Structures Lab.   Additive manufacturing (AM) creates objects by adding material layer by layer through computer aided design. This contrasts with traditional, or subtractive manufacturing that starts with something larger and chips away at material to create the final product. 3D printing is a subset of the larger AM field. Applying AM to Engineering With Nature (EWN), creates an opportunity to go beyond the conventional approaches that use steel and rock, to achieve the multiple social, economic and environmental benefits that are an objective of EWN.   The use of 3D printing unlocks the ability to make complex, overlapping, nature-inspired geometries that are impossible to make with traditional methods. This allows mimicking natural, asymmetric structures such as coral-like stubs and mangrove roots. These structures can provide habitat enhancements and erosion controls, while being aesthetically pleasing in recreational areas. They can also blend and composite synthetic and natural biopolymers. This allows scientists to tune the material's structure and mechanical properties, as well as its surface chemistry and porosity for whatever the site-specific need or application may be.   These advances can be thought of as a natural evolution of collaborative thinking which is key to the ERDC culture and are emerging, in part, related to the reduced costs and improved user friendliness of the 3D printing equipment, plus recent capital investments made at all three ERDC labs. Novel 3D printing technologies that can use natural materials such as sand and clay, have the potential to incorporate beneficial use of dredge material as a feed stock for 3D printing.   While there are lots of hobbyists, universities and even companies doing 3D printing, the application at the Army Corps in an infrastructure context is unique and the potential for beneficial use of dredge material can be a real game changer. One of the goals of work in this area is to make additive manufacturing a mission enabler for novel solutions by creating interagency partnerships and making use of natural materials standard at EWN Proving Grounds. As Burton notes: “By combining the efforts of the Geotechnical Structures Laboratory and the Environmental Laboratories, bringing together the disparate disciplines, we're going to learn a lot from each other and we're going be able to accomplish more in this space. From an EWN perspective, there are a lot of applications for this type of research and this type of capability.”   For more information, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/   Related Links Burton Suedel at LinkedIn Alan Kennedy at LinkedIn Environmental Laboratory, ERDC Zackery McClelland at LinkedIn Geotechnical and Structures Lab, ERDC

Season 5 of the Engineering With Nature® Podcast launches on November 30. Host Sarah Thorne recently talked about highlights from Season 4 and what's ahead for Season 5 with 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, and Jeff King, Deputy National Lead of the Engineering With Nature Program. The EWN Podcast launched in July of 2020 and, as shown by the nearly 25,000 total downloads that it has received since, there is a lot of interest in the topic. As Todd notes, “People came up to me that I'd never met before, telling me that they're fans and they listen to the podcast. There is clearly a desire and appetite for information about nature-based solutions and what we're doing in Engineering With Nature.” Season 4 podcast episodes averaged about 218 downloads in the first 7 days of availability (a standard podcast industry statistic) which puts the podcast in about the top 14% of ALL podcasts worldwide. As Todd notes, “The podcast is illustrating and seeding very important conversations across the Corps of Engineers; among leaders; among practitioners; and importantly, with our stakeholders and partners. These conversations are important for moving us forward conceptually, intellectually, and in terms of how we are implementing projects across the country and all around the world.” Season 5 will expand these conversations under the theme of Realizing the Value of Nature. Season 5 will feature some big-name guests, cool science, and lots of innovation. President Biden's recent Executive Order 14072, Strengthening the Nation's Forests, Communities and Local Economies, is accelerating implementation of nature-based solutions. We'll focus on commitments that are being made with respect to the Executive Order and how they will be rolled out in the months and years to come. According to Jeff, “We continue to see a lot of growth within the Network for Engineering With Nature (NEWN). All the wonderful new relationships that are now starting to coalesce within the Network are really exciting. We'll spend some time doing a deep dive into more of the technical work that's happening out there.” You can join the conversation by going to the EWN Website or wherever you get your podcasts. And we'd love to hear from you. Drop us a note! Measuring What Matters: Towards a more comprehensive and equitable evaluation of benefits   Listeners are invited to attend an important national summit “Measuring What Matters” being hosted by the EWN Program at the National Academies in Washington, DC, on November 30. Participants from USACE plus other federal, state, and local agencies, as well as private and nonprofit organizations, will explore nature's role and value, and how best to formulate, evaluate, and deliver integrated water resources projects. Follow the link to register to attend in person or virtually. Related Links EWN Website ERDC Website Todd Bridges at EWN Todd Bridges at LinkedIn Jeff King at LinkedIn Jeff King at EWN Network of Engineering With Nature EWN Atlas Series   Sarah Thorne at LinkedIn Sarah Thorne at Decision Partners Podcast Industry Report: Market Growth and Advertising Statistics in 2022 Buzzsprout Platform Statistics   EWN Podcast S4E6: A Conversation about Leadership and EWN with Colonel Gant EWN Podcast S4E7: A Conversation about Leadership and EWN with Brigadier General Kelly   Executive Order No. 14072, Strengthening the Nation's Forests, Communities and Local Economies EWN Supports White House in Accounting for Nature Measuring What Matters: Towards a More Comprehensive and Equitable Evaluation of Benefits – EWN Page Measuring What Matters: Towards a More Comprehensive and Equitable Evaluation of Benefits – National Academies Page  

What happens when a world-renowned landscape architect from Thailand comes to the United States as Designer-in-Residence to work with an award-winning architect whose passion is what he defines as watershed architecture? In Episode 10, hosts Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, Deputy Lead of the Engineering With Nature® Program at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), are talking with Kotchakorn Voraakhom (“Kotch”), an international member of the American Society of Landscape Architects and founder of Bangkok-based landscape architecture company LANDPROCESS, and Derek Hoeferlin, Chair of the Landscape Architecture and Urban Design programs at Washington University in St. Louis. Derek and his colleagues at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts are hosting Kotch's year-long appointment sponsored by the Pulitzer Arts Foundation.   Kotch is the first landscape architect to receive the UN Global Climate Action Award for her use of nature-based solutions in urban settings. Derek works on integrated water-based design strategies for major river basins, including the Mississippi.   Kotch was born and raised in Bangkok and witnessed its transformation from “green, to gray, to super gray—from a city with natural spaces to one that has been increasingly paved over.” Today, Bangkok is a city of over 10.7 million people. “It's more crowded with less natural habitat for the people who live there, which impacts the quality of life and the quality of the existing green infrastructure, like canals and green space. Agricultural land has been abandoned.”   In 2011, flooding in Thailand displaced millions of people, including Kotch's family: “I think that's really the point where I started questioning who I am as a person living in Bangkok, who I am as a landscape architect, and how can make some changes to address this problem.” This led to her thinking about the role that nature-based solutions can play in landscape architecture, which has become the foundation of her practice. “When I started in landscape architecture in my school, I had been taught to really understand what's the climate at the site, what's the culture of the people, what are the constraints and benefit of the existing natural cycle there and then go on to design. I think my team at LANDPROCESS and I are really different from traditional architects and engineers. We work as a team with them but having us on the team really brings a different approach. We make sure nature-based solutions are part of the process.”   Derek grew up in St. Louis and after studying architecture in New Orleans and New Haven and practicing for multiple years returned in 2005 to begin teaching at Washington University in St. Louis. His experience with flooding events in Missouri, including the Times Beach Disaster in 1982 and the Great Flood of 1993, led him to realize that “water can be a very politicized thing and a very difficult thing to talk about when you're talking about rebuilding communities and protecting them or integrating nature-based solutions, especially in an urbanized setting.” While teaching at WashU, he's witnessed more frequent extreme events, floods, and droughts, and come to understand that these events are not just coastal problems. “This is not just in New Orleans. It's happening up here in the St. Louis in the Midwest, and it's even happening farther upriver, which led me to look at the whole Mississippi water system.” He came across the work of Eddie Brauer, Senior Hydraulic Engineer with the USACE St. Louis District, who has been working on Mississippi basin-scale challenges. And he met Kotch, who has been engaging with the United Nations on global-scale issues. These experiences led him to ask, “How do we come together as a collective, as designers, engineers, policymakers?” on what he calls “watershed architecture thinking”—working at the large watershed scale, back down to the scale of a city, and ultimately a building.   Jeff agrees that applying natural strategies at the watershed scale is critical and notes that this approach was key to the development of the International Guidelines on Natural and Nature-Based Features for Flood Risk Management. “We know now that if we just approach the challenge as one project in one location, then another project in another area of the watershed, we're not thinking about a systematic approach. That can have downstream consequences that negate anything that we've tried to do in the way of creating resilience for that watershed.”   Kotch's focus on using nature-based solutions in urban settings creates more resilient cities that can adapt to the increased flooding that results from climate change. And nature-based solutions are key to providing addition social benefit, especially to the most vulnerable communities. Her not-for-profit company, the Porous City Network, aims to improve the resilience of urban areas by transforming impervious surfaces into a system of productive public green spaces, which help mitigate excess water. This includes maintaining threatened landscape infrastructure such as agricultural land, canals, and ditch orchards, as well as interventions like urban farms, green roofs, rain gardens, and permeable parking that provide needed space for water absorption. “When it comes to nature-based solutions in our landscape-architecture approach, we must understand how nature works and let it work itself. It's not about us controlling everything and measuring everything for our own need.”  She adds: “We have to shift our mindset to really understand the problem.”   Kotch's work is important and inspiring to landscape architects and urban planners. Speaking of her ground-breaking work in Bangkok, Derek notes, “They're stunning and they're beautiful. Her Chulalongkorn University Centenary Park—the scale of what it does embedded in the city of Bangkok—is so inspiring because you see it's not just a pocket park, it's a big project because it needs to accommodate a lot of water and hold it, to slow the water down, then eventually release it into the system. But most of the time it's a public space for people to gather, to communicate, for students to recharge, for tourists, and as a place to have different events. It's multi-use, and it's not just solving the flood risk problem. It's creating opportunities.” He adds: “I hope to see more of those types of projects happening in places like St. Louis, that really bring the nature-based systems that we're talking about and solutions, but also make those places accessible for as many people as possible.” Derek, an acclaimed architect in his own right, has a book coming out soon entitled Way Beyond Bigness: The Need for a Watershed Architecture. He presents the importance of understanding the massive scale of watersheds, like the Mississippi River watershed, and compares it to watersheds of the Mekong and Rhine Rivers in Asia and Europe. “The scales are radically different, but it's interesting to assess things that don't seem quite similar together and try to find different ways of understanding them. The speculation section, which is what we also do as designers, is where we think forward into the future. So, in the third part of the book, we have serious conversations about the future and collaboration. How do you get on the ground and catalyze communities and different groups to get together, to take action? Thinking about the whole watershed is daunting, but if you give people the tools and the language to really think about the nuances, I believe then we can start to enact change.” Jeff, Derek, and Kotch go on to talk about the importance—and challenge—of engaging a diverse set of stakeholders in landscape-scale projects. As Derek notes, “It's not just a bottom-up or top-down approach. It's both—we need to be able to listen.” Kotch notes that a key word in stakeholder engagement is “vulnerability” both from a people and a nature perspective. “Historically, there have been so many stakeholders left behind in decision making about water. Having them as part of the process is very critical. We must reverse our approach and build solutions from the ground up.”   And, as Jeff notes, landscape architects play a critical role doing just that: “Oftentimes when talking with the public and sharing information on model outcomes you're presenting graphs and figures. The message or the concept you are trying to convey can sometimes be missed. Landscape architects have a way of communicating with very broad and diverse stakeholders. That is where it becomes incredibly important for Engineering With Nature—to be able to highlight the engineering outcomes that can be achieved through different projects, using landscape-architecture renderings to provide a better sense of the environmental and social benefits that can also be achieved. Nature-based solutions are dynamic systems—they change over time. Landscape architects can show this progression, which, in turn, informs our adaptive management process. This becomes very important as we work with resource managers and regulatory agencies and the public to maximize the function of these projects over time.”   Kotch is excited about her year at Washington University in St. Louis as the Designer in Residence. She'll be co-teaching at a landscape architecture studio with Derek while learning about urban challenges and watershed management in the US. And she'll be working with Derek and his team on the development a project with the theme of ecologies of access for vulnerable sites at St. Louis. She hopes to involve the community in St. Louis in both the process and the outcome. The EWN Project team will be involved as the project develops.   “We've learned so much today about the critical role of landscape architecture and how it plays a really important part in fostering tough conversations, a new shared future and really getting everyone involved, visualizing different futures,” Jeff notes. “I see this as a continuing opportunity to inform our thinking about how we create resilience in the future and how we get to these nature-based strategies.”   Related Links EWN Website ERDC Website Jeff King at LinkedIn Jeff King at EWN   Kotchakorn Voraakhom at LinkedIn Kotchakorn Voraakhom at Washington University in St. Louis Kotchakorn Voraakhom on Wikipedia Pulitzer Arts Foundation Designer-in-Residence UN Global Climate Action Award LANDPROCESS Porous City Network Chulalongkorn University Centenary Park - Landezine International Landscape Award How to Transform Sinking Cities into Landscapes that Fight Floods – Ted Talk   Derek Hoeferlin at Washington University in St. Louis Derek Hoeferlin at LinkedIn Derek Hoeferlin Design Way Beyond Bigness: The Need for a Watershed Architecture – Book   2011 Thailand Floods Times Beach, Missouri Disaster 1982 The Great Flood of 1993 – Wikipedia The Great Flood of 1993 – Washington University in St. Louis   EWN Podcast S4E3: EWN Practice Leads Sharing Expertise through the EWN Cadre EWN Podcast S4E2: High Energy Roundtable with the EWN Practice Leads EWN Atlas International Guidelines on Natural and Nature-Based Features for Flood Risk Management  

 At least one in six people in England are at risk from flooding from rivers and the sea. Climate change means that sea levels will continue to rise, and the frequency and severity of floods and storm surges will only get worse. In Episode 9, hosts 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 two guests from England's Environment Agency (EA) in the United Kingdom (UK). Julie Foley is Director of Food Risk Strategy and National Adaptation; and her colleague, Jon Hollis, is the Nature-Based Solutions Senior Advisor. They are leading a comprehensive effort to create a nation that's ready for and resilient to flooding and coastal change now and in the future.   Julie has a 20-year career living and working with flooding and has seen firsthand the impacts of coastal flooding on communities. She has managed the operational teams responsible for the Thames' flood barrier and other associated flood defenses along the Thames estuary. About 3 years ago, she became the director of flood risk strategy where she has applied to the national scene her personal experience working with communities.    Jon, who grew up in the Fens, a low-lying part of the UK protected by sea defenses, studied remote sensing and cartography to better understand the natural environment. When he joined the Environment Agency, he worked on flood risk maps and programs to reduce flood risk. He led the £15 million natural flood management program and is mainstreaming natural flood management by acting on the learning of that program. Julie and Jon's focus is on improving the environment through flood and coastal risk management and strengthening resilience to climate extremes by using nature-based solutions (NBS).    Todd recently visited Julie and Jon and their EA colleagues and had the opportunity to visit several of their projects featuring Engineering With Nature or nature-based solutions: “Seeing the natural flood management projects across the islands is very impressive—the substance of the work that they're doing and how they are integrating nature with flood risk management engineering.”   Climate change is affecting sea-level rise, extreme weather events, and flood risk. England's Environment Agency is taking action, and as Julie notes, the focus on nature-based solutions is shaping policy: “Our Chief Executive has this wonderful saying, ‘Our thinking needs to change faster than the climate.' That means we need to think really fast and really differently. That has meant a significant transformation in some of our thinking around what flood and coastal risk management means in this country—putting climate adaptation right at the heart of that.” Julie describes how this has shifted the Environment Agency's thinking from flood protection to flood resilience and embracing a much broader set of solutions: “We are looking at nature-based solutions and not just thinking, ‘How do we build higher and higher walls,' and things that our communities don't largely want to see anymore. They're actually asking us to think differently and offer solutions that are better for their local places and the kind of things that their communities actually want to see.”   Jon adds, “One of the great things about natural flood management, nature-based solutions, working with natural processes, or Engineering With Nature, is that a lot of people can have a role in this now, whether it's in their local community or within the boundary of their own property. They can understand it and can make a real difference. And it's not just a theory; it's practice.” He describes one project undertaken in primary schools in London, where planters were built into the playgrounds next to the school buildings to capture water from the roofs: “They've got plants in them, they look beautiful and hold water. The planters save the water going into the river network. But the real benefit isn't just the flood risk side of things and the environmental outcomes, it's the fact that young students and teachers got involved. I'm passionate about this because it is bringing people together with what's going on in their environment, which is so important now.”   Having visited more than a dozen projects in England, Todd comments, “Using an American phrase, what I see happening in England is they're just ‘getting after it.' The level of substance of the work that's underway in terms of nature-based solutions is impressive. The deliberate way the Environment Agency is undertaking these projects and the level of engagement with communities and partner organizations really exemplifies how a government organization undertakes innovation and solutions that are different than maybe what have been used in the past.”   Julie and Todd talk about the importance of using the right language to mobilize people, giving them a vision that feels bold. The vision Ensuring progress towards a nation ready for, and resilient to, flooding and coastal changes—today, tomorrow and to the year 2100 does just that. Julies adds that it is critical to follow through with action noting that NBS projects need to be “mainstreamed” and not just second-best solutions. Todd notes how being intentional and clear in a strategy about the desire to innovate isn't always easy for organizations, particularly for government, but he has seen many examples in England, including the Ellis Meadows project, which is a great example of innovation that is very meaningful to the community.    The primary objective of the project was providing flood water storage for the city of Leicester but also included a hard path used as a walkway and cycleway that connects different parts of the city. As Jon notes, “This project starts from a natural perspective of wanting to reduce flood risk but then delivers these other wider benefits too. Bringing all the different people together, engaging with the community to find out how they would use the space, giving them a voice in helping to shape design, has made a ‘good' project, an ‘excellent' project.”   Julie agrees, emphasizing that people and communities need to be given a license to be more innovative and fund projects that perhaps wouldn't conform to traditional cost benefit rules: “We've also been able to try and better estimate the wider multifunctional benefits that come with projects like this. The environmental movement calls it ‘stacking.' It's just a bit of a jargon, but the more benefits you can stack, the more funding you can get from lots of different sources.”   One of Julie's motivations for taking on her current role was the opportunity to produce a national strategy for flood and coastal erosion risk management. It was a 2-year collaborative process involving local authorities, infrastructure providers responsible for the road and rail networks, water companies, farmers, land managers, the insurance sector responsible for flood insurance, professional organizations, and environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs). “We had them all involved in having a role in shaping what we wanted to do with our future flood and coastal erosion risk management strategy. They all called for us to think differently because we have this climate emergency that needs to be central to that strategy.” She describes the challenge as “really scary,” noting that the UK has a huge coastline and some of the fastest eroding shorelines across Europe.    The intention was to do things differently on politically difficult coastal challenges, with a strategy that involves planning, adapting, and potentially transitioning people away from places in which they'd been living for a very long time. As Julie says, “It's so important when you do these kinds of things to have a really high level of political support, particularly for something that is very bold and transformational. You need the political support, and you also need a huge number of partners, friends, and allies.” [Editor's note: In the episode, Julie mentions George Eustice as the current Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Since the recording, the UK has selected a new Prime Minister, leading to a new Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Ranil Jayawardena.]   The strategy focuses on 3 ambitions: climate resilient places, growth and infrastructure, and a nation ready to respond and adapt to flooding and coastal change. “When you look at the three ambitions,” Julie notes, “the word ‘flood' isn't there. That was super intentional because, yes, it's a flood and coast erosion risk management strategy, of course, but we wanted ambitions that were all about climate, multiple outcomes, and putting the context of our work within a much wider setting.”   The Environment Agency, Todd adds, has responsibilities that in the US are handled by USACE, FEMA, the EPA, and other agencies: “The Agency's efforts are quite impressive. They are ‘calling their shots' at a level of specificity and detail that's admirable. They're moving in a particular direction and being bold and saying specifically what they wish to achieve by what year. That's real strategy work at its best from what I have observed.”    As we wrap up the episode, Jon comments that “it's been inspirational working with Todd and his team on the NNBF Guidelines and the EWN Atlases—both are beautiful publications. I think we get a lot out of the relationship both ways and realize how many of the barriers, challenges, and issues are very similar in quite different places. Determining how we can help people overcome the challenges they have—some of our solutions have come from the example set by the US Army Corps of Engineers.”   “It's been so enriching to what we're doing in Engineering With Nature to have the Environment Agency and Julie and Jon and their colleagues engaged with us,” Todd says. “I'm looking forward—as they call out in their Roadmap—to the Agency's further engagement with the Army Corps of Engineers in the future. I just think we can do fabulous things together that are beneficial to our communities.”   Related Links EWN Website ERDC Website Todd Bridges at EWN Todd Bridges at LinkedIn   Julie Foley at LinkedIn Jon Hollis at LinkedIn Environment Agency Twitter   EWN Podcast S4E6: A Conversation about Leadership and EWN with Colonel Gant, Commander of the USACE South Pacific Division EWN Atlas International Guidelines on Natural and Nature-Based Features for Flood Risk Management   South East Rivers Trust SuDS Design and Delivery Connecting Nature: SuDS in Sutton's Schools Ellis Meadows becomes haven for local wildlife National Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy for England EA Flood Map: Get flood risk information for planning in England Press release: Environment Agency sets out roadmap for more flood and climate-resilient nation Policy paper: Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy Roadmap to 2026

As students head back to class, Episode 8 of the EWN Podcast focuses on foundation of EWN—the disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM/STEM). In several episodes of the podcast, we've touched on the importance of encouraging students—the next generation of scientists, engineers, and EWN practitioners. Here we feature some additional discussion from guests from two episodes this season talking about STEAM/STEM and their advice to students.   In Episode 1, host Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, Deputy Lead of the Engineering With Nature® Program at the US Army Corps of Engineers, spoke with Amanda Tritinger, Assistant Program Manager for the EWN Program and a Research Hydraulics Engineer at the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Matt Bilskie, Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia. Matt is the Lead of the Coastal Ocean Analysis and Simulation Team (COAST), a research team that develops computational hydrodynamic models to simulate astronomic tides, wind waves, storm surge, and rainfall runoff in coastal and oceanic environments.   Matt focuses on two important points. First, that one doesn't have to be “good at math” to pursue a STEM-related career. Admitting that he was not particularly good in math, Matt noted that “math is just a tool. There are many tools that you can have in your tool belt and still follow your passion in a STEM-related field.” He also stressed the importance of listening and learning from others who have had experience in the areas and issues that you're working on, adding “one day you will be that person providing expertise, and other people will listen to you.”   Amanda builds on Matt's advice, noting that if someone is struggling to understand a topic, “don't get frustrated when you don't get a topic right away”—there are numerous resources available to help, from books, to YouTube, to podcasts. She also underscores the value of the “A” in STEAM, encouraging students to keep up with the Arts: “There can be so much innovation brought to the science if you're investing in the ‘art' part of your brain.”   Jeff agrees: “It takes many different backgrounds and skill sets to solve very complex problems like the ones the EWN Program is working on. Matt and Amanda are two excellent computer modelers; but we also need biologists, ecologists, landscape architects, social scientists, and economists, all working collaboratively, to be able to deliver very meaningful solutions. So, there's going to be a home for every student today in one of these disciplines. And you'll have the opportunity to work with many other talented people to solve the different challenges that we're facing.”   The conversation wraps up with encouragement to students to be curious, keep an open mind, and be holistic in their approach to challenges. Always look for opportunities to make a difference.   In Episode 6, 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, had the opportunity to talk with Colonel (P) Antoinette Gant, Commander and Division Engineer of the South Pacific Division (SPD), who is a strong advocate for STEAM/STEM, especially for unrepresented populations. She shares her personal journey with students whenever she has the opportunity: “I learned that less than 3% of African American women were engineers. So, the road less traveled was something that I liked. I like math and science. Anytime I can get in front of a group, I talk about the importance of STEAM/STEM.”   COL Gant's advice to students: “Take every opportunity that is afforded to you. Don't sell yourself short, even if it's something that you're not as comfortable with. You don't want to know how many times I've been in situations where I haven't been comfortable with something and just been thrown into the fire. And I figured out how to actually make it happen, and not by myself but with my teammates right by my side. Do not be afraid of what could be, and just give yourself the opportunity to be able to be the change that you want to see. Do the things that you one time thought were truly impossible, because if you don't dream big, then why do we dream even at all?”   Todd adds, “Science and technology and engineering and mathematics are so important for us to understand how to pursue new approaches, distributed engineering approaches across the landscape to complement more conventional engineering and Engineering With Nature. I'm so glad that Colonel Gant also mentioned how important the humanities are, art and history and literature, because if you don't know how you got where you are, you're likely to maybe not understand where you need to go and maybe what to avoid in the future. It's important that we find opportunities to draw from multiple fields and practices and disciplines as we Engineer With Nature.”   Episode 8 closes with Todd's advice to students: “Develop and follow your passion. It's so important that you understand what motivates you personally, what you are passionate about, and then you pursue and develop a career that supports that.”   Related Links EWN Website ERDC Website Jeff King at LinkedIn Jeff King at EWN Amanda Tritinger at LinkedIn Amanda Tritinger at EWN   Matthew Bilskie at UGA Matthew Bilskie at LinkedIn Coastal Ocean Analysis and Simulation Team (COAST) Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems (IRIS)   EWN Podcast S4E1: Scaling Up, Up, Up with CSTORM and EWN EWN Podcast S3E3: The Next Generation Makes the Future of EWN Even Brighter   Todd Bridges at EWN Todd Bridges at LinkedIn   COL Gant at USACE South Pacific Division COL Gant at LinkedIn USACE South Pacific Division   EWN Podcast S4E6: A Conversation about Leadership and EWN with Colonel Gant, Commander of the USACE South Pacific Division    

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 4, host Sarah Thorne and Todd Bridges continue their discussion on rivers—their role and value. In the winter of 2022, Todd and his wife (and trusty driver), Anita, traveled nearly 8,000 miles through eight states on the “Southwest Swing” of the EWN On The Road tour. They visited the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead on the Nevada and Arizona border, which is at its lowest level in its history, an alarming indication of the megadrought that has gripped the Southwest. As part of the trip, Todd spent some time exploring the Los Angeles River in California, what he calls, “an important case example of river engineering in the twentieth century.” The Los Angeles River travels 51 miles through the greater Los Angeles area, with nearly a million people living within 1 mile of it. Because of challenges related to flooding and the natural movement of the course of the river, it was “locked down,” engineered into an unchanging, unnatural, concrete channel. This unusual situation caused Todd to ponder whether rivers are “problems to be solved” or “resources to be valued.” To help answer this question, Todd spent time talking to people living and working nearby about what they want the river to be. “I met more than 20 people from a whole variety of organizations that have been working for many years to reintroduce the ‘natural' into the Los Angeles River. And I think what people are looking for is to reconnect to the river. One group was focused on restoration at the Sepulveda Basin, a large 2000+ plus acre area next to the river with huge potential to become basically the Central Park of Los Angeles, or like the Golden Gate Park of San Francisco. . . . There's just a tremendous amount of interest and growing momentum to create value by reintroducing the ‘natural' into the Los Angeles River.” There is a significant opportunity for EWN to be part of this transformation: “I'm quite hopeful that we're going to be able to collaborate in this space so the Los Angeles River can become a model for how we can reengineer to harmonize the natural with human communities.   Related Links EWN Website ERDC Website Todd Bridges at EWN Todd Bridges at LinkedIn EWN On The Road LA County Department of Public Works – LA River Master Plan LA River Master Plan EWN Podcast S3E4: Engineering With Nature for Safe and Livable Cities

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 3, Todd Bridges talks with host Sarah Thorne about part of the trip that he and his wife Anita—the unofficial EWN driver—took in the summer of 2021, traveling across 14 states from Mississippi to Montana and back in what Todd calls the Heartland Tour. On one day of the tour, August 7, they visited five rivers in one day—Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers near Missoula, Montana, and the Jefferson, Madison, and Missouri Rivers near Bozeman, Montana—experiencing a wide range of history between people and rivers, as Todd says, “damming, contaminating, undamming, restoring, exploring, experiencing.” He adds: “That day made a strong impression upon me, to see so many different contexts and to link together a whole range of human activity. We've seen that whole progression over the last 150 years, and it was revealed in that day when we visited five rivers. . . . I was thinking a lot about what the rivers had been before people began to, if you will, ‘mess with them,' engineer them for a variety of purposes. I was also thinking about what the future of our relationship will be with rivers and how we can apply the principles and practices of Engineering With Nature to recover some of the services and some of the values that rivers can provide to us, while at the same time reduce some of the challenges that climate change and other pressures are bringing to our rivers.”   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 Stops 14–17 Clark Fork River Mega Site Clark Fork Coalition NPS: Three Forks of the Missouri – Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Montana FWP: Anaconda Smoke Stack State Park

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