Podcasts about engineers usace

Send us a textThe Doan Brook Watershed Partnership (DBWP) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) are collaborating on a stream-restoration project to address wall deterioration, improve fish habitat, and restore natural stream function through Cleveland's Cultural Gardens along MLK Boulevard. Sections of the channel's stone walls, built during the Works Progress Administration, have broken apart, and local experts are working to balance historic preservation with ecological restoration.In this discussion, Emily Kao (DBWP) and Jenn Brancho (USACE) describe their organizations' measured approach to planning a revitalized urban waterway. We learn how channelization has dramatically altered the stream's natural functions, and how the partnership can deliver a comprehensive restoration strategy that honors both ecological needs and cultural heritage. 

M2S2 will be presenting three webinars in FY25, titled "Sessions from the STAND DOWN" highlighting presentations from the FY25 M2S2 Stand Down hosted by US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in December 2024. These online events will bring together USACE, DoD leaders, federal land managers, state and federal regulators and contractors to discuss munitions response cleanup issues and initiatives.  Presenters and attendees will discuss programmatic information, and share lessons learned to foster strong working relationships. The first webinar in this series will focus on Remedial Actions and include the following presentations:"RA Lessons learned" — Elise Goggin"Regulatory perspective on ROD's" — Jeff Swanson "Common challenges implementing the remedy" — DJ Myers"Records we need in the Record of Decision" — Nancy Heflin To view this archive online or download the slides associated with this seminar, please visit http://www.clu-in.org/conf/tio/STAND-DOWN-1_042925/

M2S2 will be presenting three webinars in FY25, titled "Sessions from the STAND DOWN" highlighting presentations from the FY25 M2S2 Stand Down hosted by US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in December 2024. These online events will bring together USACE, DoD leaders, federal land managers, state and federal regulators and contractors to discuss munitions response cleanup issues and initiatives.  Presenters and attendees will discuss programmatic information, and share lessons learned to foster strong working relationships. The first webinar in this series will focus on Remedial Actions and include the following presentations:"RA Lessons learned" — Elise Goggin"Regulatory perspective on ROD's" — Jeff Swanson "Common challenges implementing the remedy" — DJ Myers"Records we need in the Record of Decision" — Nancy Heflin To view this archive online or download the slides associated with this seminar, please visit http://www.clu-in.org/conf/tio/STAND-DOWN-1_042925/

As Hurricane Helene swept through the southeastern United States in late September 2025, it left behind widespread destruction, particularly in Southwest Virginia. Two of the hardest-hit areas in Virginia were the City of Damascus and Claytor Lake in Dublin due to extreme flooding of both the New and Holston Rivers. Hosts James Walker and LTC Tony Funkhouser traveled to Claytor Lake after the Debris Removal operation to sit down with the key leaders from the local, state, and federal levels who spearheaded the massive recovery operation and recorded this season finale episode of the Corps Talk podcast. Watch or listen to this episode to discover how disaster response transitions from local public safety and first responders to state elements such as the Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM) and ultimately to federal agencies such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and FEMA. The guests explain the timeline of operations, from initial emergency assessments to long-term environmental recovery, and the logistical challenges associated with such large-scale debris removal operations. Featured Guests: Aaron Jones – PRT Mission Manager, USACE - Baltimore District Dave Dobyns – Board of Directors, FOCL Ben Porter – Emergency Management Specialist, USACE - Norfolk District Brody Havens – Park Manager, Claytor Lake State Park Whether you're simply curious about how emergency response works, passionate about environmental restoration, or interested in how real-world interagency disaster response operations might affect you and your family during a large-scale emergency, this episode offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at a community-driven recovery effort that you won't want to miss.

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 

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

In this episode we take a closer look at the latest innovation revolutionizing the way the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) does business. Listen in as Jennifer Moyer, Chief of the USACE Regulatory Program, introduces the new Regulatory Request System. The Regulatory Request System is a web-based tool that helps a person find general permitting information, submit an individual and general permit application, submit pre-application meeting requests, and jurisdictional determination requests using online forms. You can find this tool at https://rrs.usace.army.mil/rrs Have your tried RSS? Let us know what you think at rrs@usace.army.mil

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 

AgEagle Aerial Systems CEO Bill Irby joined Steve Darling from Proactive to announce a significant new contract for the company. AgEagle has secured a purchase order to deliver 20 eBee VISION full-stack systems, including control systems, batteries, backpacks, and limited spares, to a leading distributor in the United Arab Emirates. This contract is valued at approximately $2 million for the fiscal year 2024. The company operates three centres of excellence concentrating on drones, specialty cameras, and control software. The company delivers fully integrated systems combining sensors, aircraft, robotic technologies, and control systems. Irby emphasized that this contract underscores the global need for enhanced public safety and security. The deal supports a government customer with best-in-class UAV defense solutions for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. This announcement follows closely on the heels of another milestone for AgEagle: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) recently completed training for National Guardsmen using AgEagle's eBee TAC drone. This drone, which is NDAA-compliant, is the first fixed-wing UAV to be added to the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) Blue UAS list and cleared to fly over humans. Looking forward, AgEagle aims to maintain its growth in the military domain while continuing to support its legacy customers in agriculture and other civil sectors. The primary goal for the remainder of the year and into 2025 is to fulfil customer commitments and further develop their strategic plans. #proactiveinvestors #AGEagleAerialSystemsinc #nyseamerican #uavs #MilitaryContracts, #SecurityTechnology, #RoboticTechnologies, #SpecialtyCameras, #ControlSoftware, #FrenchArmy, #UAE, #Surveillance, #CombatOperations, #AgricultureTechnology, #CivilSectors, #GrowthStrategy, #CEOInterview, #BillIrby, #PublicCompany, #StrategicShift, #CustomerCommitments#invest #investing #investment #investor #stockmarket #stocks #stock #stockmarketnews

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 

In this episode of Corps Talk, hosts James and Maj. Tony Funkhouser sit down with Aubrey Moore, a student from Princess Anne High School. Aubrey shares her passion for research and environmental restoration, detailing how she and her classmates gain hands-on experience at a wetlands restoration site right behind their school. This effort is part of the larger Lynnhaven River Basin Ecosystem Restoration Project, a collaborative initiative between the City of Virginia Beach and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). The podcast also features interviews with Gina Dotolo, a USACE Biologist, and Jim Milliken, a Water Quality Improvement Specialist with the City of Virginia Beach. They discuss the significance of the project and how their organizations plan to build a better future through their partnership. For more information about the wetlands portion of this project, click here: https://www.nao.usace.army.mil/Missions/Civil-Works/Lynnhaven-River-Ecosystem-Restoration/Wetland-Restoration/ This learn more about the Lynnhaven River Basin Ecosystem Restoration Project go to: https://www.nao.usace.army.mil/LynnhavenEco/

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

In this episode of the Govcon Giants Podcast, Randie Ward sits down with Shauna Weatherly, President and Founder of Federal Subcontract Solutions LLC, to delve into Weatherly's extensive experience in Federal acquisition. With over 35 years of hands-on experience and a career spanning various crucial roles within the General Services Administration (GSA), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and more, Weatherly brings a wealth of knowledge to the table. Throughout the discussion, Weatherly shares insights gleaned from her tenure as a Senior Procurement Analyst at GSA, where she served as an advisor to the Civilian Agency Acquisition Council, analyzing the impacts of new laws, executive orders, and Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and Defense FAR Supplement (DFARS) rules on SAM.gov. Her roles as Lead Business Management Specialist and Contracting Officer's Representative (COR) on the governmentwide GSA SmartPay 3 contracts provided her with invaluable experience in navigating complex procurement processes. Weatherly's leadership positions, including Director of the National Airspace System, Logistics, and Facilities O&M Contract Branch at FAA, and Contracting Chief at USACE's Tulsa District, showcase her expertise in developing acquisition strategies, evaluating sources, and negotiating contracts across various industries. Additionally, her deployment to the Afghanistan Engineer District highlighted her commitment to overseeing compliance processes for construction contracts in challenging environments. As a seasoned instructor and sought-after speaker on Federal acquisition topics, Weatherly brings a unique perspective to the conversation, offering practical advice for small businesses looking to navigate the intricacies of Federal acquisition policies and processes. Her dedication to supporting the Department of Defense (DoD), FAA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), GSA, and civilian agencies underscores her passion for ensuring mission success. Join us as we explore Weatherly's journey from Federal Civilian Service to entrepreneurship, and gain valuable insights into the world of Federal acquisition from one of the industry's most respected experts.   Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shauna-weatherly/  Website: https://www.fedsubk.com/about  Contact: https://www.fedsubk.com/contact-us  Email: info@mysite.com 

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 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

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

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

Join us in this special podcast episode as we explore the career of Richard Klein, recently retired Chief of the Programs and Civil Works Branch at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). With a remarkable 45-year tenure that ended on December 19, Mr. Klein offers a wealth of stories, insights, and inspiration from his journey in civil engineering. Listen as James, Maj. Funkhouser and Mr. Klein delve into topics like professional development in engineering, the value of mentorship, adapting to changes, and building lasting relationships with partners and stakeholders. This episode is a valuable resource for both current engineers and those about to embark on their career path.

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

“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 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is responsible for more than 700 dams across the Unities States that provide multiple benefits such as flood risk management, navigation, water supply, hydropower, environmental stewardship, fish and wildlife conservation, and recreation. Through the Dam Safety Program, USACE provides oversight for its dams and works to ensure they remain safe, reliable, and able to provide their intended benefits. It's National Dam Safety Awareness Day and in this episode of Inside the Castle, we talk with Travis Tutka, USACE Headquarters Dam and Levee Branch Chief and Aaron Snyder, Director of the Corps Water Infrastructure Financing Program about the state of dam safety and the path forward for maintaining, upgrading, and repairing our Nations dams.

This edition features a story about Lt. Gen. Robert Van Antwerp, Chief of Engineers, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), visiting Wiesbaden, Germany, to inspect quality and thank Corps of Engineer workers. Produced by Mary Cochran.

In this episode Inside the Castle talks about sustainable and innovative military construction with Kathleen O'Neill, Dr. Christopher Thompson, and Dr. Robert Moser. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is supporting the Department of Defense and White House Administration's efforts to reduce harmful impacts on the environment by incorporating innovation and sustainable materials in our building processes. Additionally, USACE partners with the Army, Navy, Air Force, and private industry to execute trial construction projects on military installations that meet the NDAA's sustainability objectives. USACE has a goal to lower the lifetime embodied carbon emission* of infrastructure by at least 30% from established baselines and to incorporate sustainable materials. Listen in and learn how USACE is developing sustainable infrastructure solutions for the nation's bases, camps, posts and stations.

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  

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  

This is our second episode in our “deep dive” series. And this time, it's all about the geotechnical depth exam! If you're gearing up to take that one, this is for you. We dive into everything you need to know about it, from the overall exam experience to the topics and codes that need to be top of mind on exam day. Tune in to Learn: The overall exam experience: how much it costs, where you take it, the exam structure What the geotechnical PE civil exam really looks like A big part of the geotech exam today that didn't use to be a “big deal” in the past The 8 breadth topics you need to know regardless of your chosen depth exam The 10 in-depth geotechnical topics you need to internalize for you depth section Which geotech-related codes and standards do you need for your depth exam? The best resources to over-prepare you for the geotech exam — and where to find them The surprising pass rates for both first-time and repeat test takers Our Partners: Audible - https://civilengineeringacademy.com/audible PPI - https://civilengineeringacademy.com/ppi School of PE - https://civilengineeringacademy.com/sope Resources Mentioned: Construction Exam Episode (#159) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msg8mzjyxd8 Geotechnical Exam Specs - https://ncees.org/wp-content/uploads/Civ-Geo-April-2022_r2.pdf Geotech Resources - https://civilengineeringacademy.com/geotechnical-engineering-books Geotech Depth Practice Exam - https://gum.co/ZLbi PE CBT Exam Simulator - https://civilengineeringacademy.com/depth-exam NCEES Website - https://ncees.org NCEES YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/user/NCEESMedia PE Exam Pass Rates - https://ncees.org/engineering/pe/pass-rates OSHA - https://www.osha.gov U.S. Department of Labor - https://www.dol.gov US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) - https://www.usace.army.mil US Department of Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) - https://highways.dot.gov ASCE - https://www.asce.org Pearson VUE - https://home.pearsonvue.com CEA Resources: Website - https://civilengineeringacademy.com The Ultimate Civil FE Review Course - https://civilfereviewcourse.com The Ultimate Civil PE Review Course - https://civilpereviewcourse.com FE and PE Practice Exams - https://civilengineeringacademy.com/exams Free Facebook Community - https://ceacommunity.com Reach out to Isaac - isaac@civilengineeringacademy.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/civilengineeringacademy/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/civilengineeringacademy/support

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  

Welcome to Episode 4! We're discussing the role of EWN and nature-based solutions (NBS) in addressing urban challenges to build community and regional resilience. Host Sarah Thorne is joined by new co-host, Burton Suedel, Research Biologist at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE); Abby Hall, Senior Advisor on Local and Regional Planning, with the Office of Community Revitalization, at the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA); and Jim McPherson, Federal Coordinating Officer for Region 1, with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).   Jim has had a long career in disaster response, first with the U.S. Coast Guard, where he participated in the response to Hurricane Katrina, now a Federal Coordinating Officer with FEMA. Jim's current role is coordinating all federal agencies in a disaster, including USACE: “One of my favorite agencies to work with is the US Army Corps of Engineers because they are the nation's toolbox. They can do anything.”   Abby grew up in rural Oklahoma as a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and studied anthropology at Stanford University. Her environmental education work at the EPA focused on helping people gain more access to green space in their day-to-day lives, whether it be big city parks, urban trees, community gardens, or creek trails. This led to her focus on green infrastructure for disaster resilience: “Resilience is a community's ability to survive disasters and to be ready for the impacts of climate change, protecting public health, delivering environmental justice, preserving a culture, strengthening the local economy, for long-term success of the community overall, not just in the context of natural disasters.”   The EWN Program has a relatively new focus on urban landscapes and the environment.  As Burton notes, “EWN has funded a research task specifically looking at how EWN concepts and principles have been and could be incorporated into urban settings and landscapes. There are multiple challenges at the urban level. We're thinking about managing flood and storm risk. We want to improve the ecosystem functions associated with community infrastructure. And we also want to improve the water quality and flood protection in these areas and by so doing, improve the public health and social benefits.”   The focus of EPA's Greening America's Communities Program is similar. Abby says, “It's one of my favorite things I get to work on at EPA. It's a design assistance program for communities where EPA and a team of landscape architects and urban designers come to a community and hold workshops with a range of local perspectives to put together a vision for what green infrastructure solutions should literally look like. We're talking to the school kids who need a green street to walk from home to school. We're talking to the farmers who need a space in town to create a farmers' market. We're really bringing together different perspectives to design that green infrastructure and people love the approach because it's fun, it's engaging and it's visual. Whether it's a city or a tribal community, they can use the pictures created to fundraise and actually get their designs built.”   The EPA, working with FEMA and a regional land use agency in the San Francisco Bay area, developed the Regional Resilience Toolkit to help regions and communities to become more resilient. It presents a 5-step process to bring together government and non-government regional partners to produce the top priorities for resilience investments across a region to plan, fund and build large-scale green infrastructure. The process meets FEMA's requirements for its hazard mitigation planning program, which means the priority action is eligible for FEMA funding.  And as Burton notes, “The Toolkit is a really good enabler, not only for the EPA, but as a way to collaborate with USACE and others looking for increased inter-agency collaboration, and perhaps for conducting pilot projects and other projects going forward.”   Jim emphasizes the importance of these approaches being actionable. “It's very important that we do these studies, but it's more important that we have an action plan. FEMA is really results-driven. We're action-orientated we don't just want to pass information.” As an example, Jim describes a coordinated response to homelessness in Hartford, Connecticut: “FEMA was putting everybody into a hotel during COVID, but people weren't getting any services, they were basically just housed. Then we got together with fed, states, locals, our USACE Lead Field Coordinator, and she starts looking at all the types of things that we could bring into this hotel -- organic gardening, vertical gardening, having residents compost leftover food from local restaurants, putting solar panels on the roof and having some who are formerly homeless people get training. Now we're using all the wraparound services from the federal, state, and local governments. When we talk about vulnerable populations, there has to be a solution. It can't just be identifying that we have a housing, a homeless situation. What am I going to do about it?”   Taking a holistic approach to building community resilience is a key theme of this episode.  Abby comments that, “EPA's Equitable Resilience Assistance Program reflects a priority across the federal government to look at how equitable our programs and funding are. We're working with states and tribes, focusing on large funding streams, starting at federal sources and flowing through states and tribal governments, and how can those be more thoughtfully distributed.”     As the episode wraps up, Burton emphasizes the growing need to renew existing infrastructure, relating how the concrete and steel structures constructed over the past 100 years must be modified, repaired, or replaced. “When we replace this infrastructure, we need to think about ways we can increase the value associated with it, going beyond intended engineering objectives, to include environmental, social, and economic benefits. One of the best ways to do that is to incorporate nature-based solutions into these projects to provide greater benefits.”      Collaborating with agency partners to bring a full slate of expertise and resources to address multiple challenges at the community level is really the key to building resilience.   Related Links EWN Website ERDC Website Burton Suedel at LinkedIn Burton Suedel at EWN   Abby Hall at LinkedIn Smart Growth at EPA EPA Community Revitalization on Facebook EPA's Greening America's Communities Program Reports from Greening America's Communities Projects Greening America's Capitals – Little Rock, Arkansas EPA's Regional Resilience Toolkit MMSD 2019 Resilience Plan - A Blueprint for the Future EPA's Equitable Resilience Assistance Program   Jim McPherson at LinkedIn FEMA Region 1 Hurricane Katrina Hartford Courant – Former hotel in Hartford's South Meadows to become new emergency shelter for men

In Episode 2 we had a high energy roundtable with the EWN Practice Leads who play a critical role in broadening and expanding the application of Engineering With Nature practices and nature-based solutions within the US Army Corps of Engineers. In Episode 3, the EWN Practice Leads return to talk about how they're solving challenges, advancing EWN implementation through the EWN Implementation Cadre, and sharing what they are learning with other practitioners.   Host Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, Deputy Lead of the Engineering With Nature Program at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), are joined again by a roundtable of the EWN Practice Leads. Elizabeth Godsey is the Technical Lead for Coastal Engineering and Regional Sediment Management with Mobile District; Danielle Szimanski is a Project Manager and Ecologist with Baltimore District; Eddie Brauer is a Senior Hydraulic Engineer with St. Louis District; and Dave Crane is an Environmental Resource Specialist with Omaha District. We asked each to talk about their current projects.   Danielle, a Coastal Practice Lead, describes her work in the Chesapeake Bay where rising sea level is already occurring and is expected to increase. She and her team are restoring barrier islands and marshes to combat the loss of habitat and for flood risk management of inland areas. “Being able to restore these marshes, especially if they're degraded and fragmented, and being able to stave off that future loss and stop them from turning into open water is critical for the Chesapeake Bay.” Danielle also discusses work underway at Deal Island: “The Deal Island project is a maintenance dredging project on the Wicomico River. We're going to use the dredge material to restore approximately 70 acres of degraded and fragmented marsh. This will restore that wetland for migratory birds, and provide nesting habitat specifically for the Saltmarsh Sparrow, which is a threatened species.” She adds, “there's been a lot of work with other federal, state and non-government agencies to create this design and complete pre- and post-monitoring to assess how these wetlands are actually going to provide habitat once they are created.”   Elizabeth, also a Coastal Practice Lead, has worked on a number of coastal restoration projects in the Gulf to restore habitats for threatened and endangered species including sea turtles and piping plovers: “In Mississippi alone we've restored over 2,500 acres across the coastal zone habitats, including beach, dune, wetlands, and island restoration. That's about 2000 football fields of restoration work in that state alone.” She's taking that first-hand knowledge and experience and, as a Practice Lead, sharing leading practices and key learnings with others: “The biggest thing that we're doing is our monitoring and adaptive management. It's a long-term look at the project performance and the ecological benefits that come from the projects. We give that back to scientists, to universities, to people at the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), and the US Geological Survey (USGS) so they can improve their modeling tools and reduce uncertainty in their predictions.” She also stresses the importance of combining multiple benefits to help achieve whatever the mission goal is, whether it is storm risk management, navigation and economic benefit, or ecosystem protection and restoration: “We're able to integrate each of those benefits and provide that value-add to the nation. We're getting that message out and showing people how to do that, and how you communicate the benefits of this approach to decision-makers.”   Turning to the Riverine Practice Leads, Eddie describes the importance of taking a holistic perspective of riverine systems. “There are so many people that have a day-to-day connection to the river beyond just the projects that the Corps is doing. It's our responsibility to ensure that we account for everyone's needs on all the projects that we construct. To do that, it's critical to understand that each project is part of a broader system.” He goes on to describe a project that the Corps participated in on the Madeira River in Brazil, the largest tributary of the Amazon River and a critical navigation corridor for transporting goods and people. “It was extra critical for us to be to take a watershed approach, to understand the system before doing anything. We spent four years studying the system prior to making a single recommendation. Through this analysis, we understood that because of the geology of the river, we were able to manage it in smaller reaches instead of very large engineering projects, similar to what you'd see on the Missouri or the Mississippi Rivers. We were able to nudge the river through potentially temporary river training structures and spark natural geomorphic processes to accomplish our goals, as opposed to using a brute force engineering approach.”   Dave is working on a project on a 12-mile stretch of the Platte River that runs through the city and county of Denver where the Corps had built dams in the past. By rethinking the approach and applying EWN principles, he and his team are achieving multiple benefits: “We're doing things like completely removing or modifying drop structures in the river that allow for better fish passage and better in-channel habitat, while also helping to reduce sedimentation the channel. In some areas we're able to pull back the riverbanks to allow more flood water conveyance capacity. Working within an urban area, that has a very direct and large connection to a much larger landscape, laterally and upstream and downstream.”   Working together, the four Practice Leads have learned from each other and developed shared priorities. As Elizabeth notes: “Connecting practitioners of different backgrounds like us with this overarching vision of Engineering With Nature was the thing that really made it easy for us to figure out our group's strengths and differences; how we could come together and work, and also what those priorities needed to be, because we could find those common grounds across the landscape.”   One of their top priorities was expand the practice of EWN across the Corps. In 2021 the Practice Leads established the EWN Implementation Cadre. As Dave explains, “It's an informal internal network of EWN and natural and nature-based features practitioners. We have a space where we connect and share experiences, knowledge, ideas, upload documents to a shared drive and have discussions online.” Danielle describes the process of sharing that goes on across the Cadre: “The key word that we were looking for, for the Cadre hub was ‘crowdsourcing'. Project managers from anywhere in the country that have become a member of this hub can pose a question to the entire group, the multiple hundreds of Cadre members.” As Eddie notes, in addition to leveraging resources and connections, the Cadre provides an opportunity to bring new ideas into the Corps.   According to Jeff, the Cadre as an unqualified success: “When the Cadre was launched, the Leads invited anyone within the Corps who was interested in learning more about the EWN Cadre to attend their opening webinar – 800 Corps employees participated in that first meeting! And the interest has continued. It's just been incredible to see the number of people coming to this space, wanting to learn more about Engineering With Nature, offering their thoughts, and their questions. Creating this repository of information has become so valuable. It's a special place and just a real testimony to the hard work that the Practice Leads are doing.”   Related Links EWN Website ERDC Website Jeff King at LinkedIn Jeff King at EWN   Elizabeth Godsey at LinkedIn Elizabeth Godsey at EWN Mississippi Coastal Improvements Program Gulf Islands National Seashore – Ship Island Gulf Islands National Seashore – Cat Island Deer Island Aquatic Ecosystem Restoration Project Monitoring and Adaptive Management Alabama Island Restoration-Dauphin Island   Danielle Szimanski at LinkedIn Danielle Szimanski at EWN Wicomico River - Deal Island Project Raising the Bar for Salt Marshes on Deal Island – Audubon   Edward Brauer at EWN USACE St. Louis District: An Inland Proving Ground Madeira River Navigation Improvement Planning Study PIANC – Working with Nature for Climate-Resilient Ports and Waterways   David Crane at EWN USACE Omaha district to partner with city of Denver on $350M waterway restoration, flood mitigation project South Platte River – Final Integrated Feasibility Report and Environmental Impact Statement   EWN Implementation Cadre Network of Engineering With Nature EWN Atlas Series   EWN Podcast S4E2: High Energy Roundtable with the EWN Practice Leads  

Welcome to Episode 2 of Season 4! EWN Practice Leads play a critical role in broadening and expanding the application of Engineering With Nature practices and nature-based solutions. Host Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, Deputy Lead of the Engineering With Nature Program at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), are joined by a roundtable of EWN Practice Leads who are all with USACE. Elizabeth Godsey is the Technical Lead for Coastal Engineering and Regional Sediment Management with Mobile District; Danielle Szimanski is a Project Manager and Ecologist with Baltimore District; Edward Brauer is a Senior Hydraulic Engineer with St. Louis District; and David Crane is an Environmental Resource Specialist with Omaha District.   Consistent with this season's theme—Up, Up, Up, with Engineering With Nature—EWN Practice Leads were established to enable the continued expansion of EWN. According to Jeff, “Back in March of 2021, we were experiencing a lot of growth within the EWN Program, and we realized that for this growth to continue, we really needed to reach beyond this national-level program and get out into the field more. We strived to identify individuals who would help us grow the program so, we put out a call internal to the Corps. Eddie, Elizabeth, Danielle, and Dave stepped up and answered the call. It's been really exciting working with all four of them.”   The Leads had various levels of experience with EWN, but all were motivated by an opportunity to help expand the application of EWN principles and practices throughout the Corps by acting as the connection between the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), and the districts. Elizabeth called it an “aha moment,” describing it as “a leadership opportunity to be a mentor and to connect other practitioners with cutting-edge science and engineering with nature solutions.” Danielle was excited about signing on: “I love the idea of sharing opportunities for EWN with others that haven't had that experience before—being able to put EWN at the forefront and show that even if you haven't done it before, you don't need to be afraid of it.”     As Jeff says, it's a two-way opportunity: “For me sitting at a higher level, I do engage with the Corps's districts quite a bit, but there's an opportunity to learn more about what's happening on the ground. The Practice Leads provide incredible insight that helps EWN leadership really get the full picture of what is happening in the districts and where future opportunities are located. All four Leads are dedicated, motivated, and really inspire us to do more.”   The Practice Leads lead the EWN Implementation Cadre—an informal network of US Army Corps of Engineers practitioners, representing a variety of disciplines across the enterprise, that is working to advance the application of EWN principles, practices, and technologies to deliver nature-based solutions (which will be discussed in more detail in Episode 3). The Leads represent two practice areas—Coastal and Riverine. We discuss their experiences applying EWN in their districts and share how EWN approaches, including large, landscape-scale nature-based features, can be translated to other practitioners.   Elizabeth, a Coastal Practice Lead, describes the challenges Mobile District is facing along the Northern Gulf of Mexico coast associated with tropical storms, heavy rainfall, and rising seas: “Those coastal hazards can increase the stressors to our natural and manmade systems that serve as a frontline of defense and increase the risk to our growing coastal populations, critical infrastructure, as well as nationally significant habitats and species. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Congress authorized the Mississippi Coastal Improvements Program to address long-term risk reduction. An element of this was to restore offshore Mississippi barrier islands. This resulted with estimated annual storm-damage-reduction benefits of over $20 million to the mainland coast.” These were also discussed in S2E1: Expanding Engineering With Nature.   Danielle, a Coastal Practice Lead, describes work being doing in the Chesapeake Bay on the Swan Island Project that has been mentioned in previous podcast episodes (S1E5: Collaborating to Create Wildlife Habitat While Restoring Islands and Improving Community Resilience and S4E1: Scaling Up, Up, Up with CSTORM and EWN). The Swan Island restoration is intended to work as a natural breakwater against storm impacts to protect coastal areas by using dredged material to increase elevation, along with vegetation (on shore and submerged). The data gathered is being used to improve modeling. “There's been a lot of work across agencies to be able to combine all this information together for the CSTORM model so we can use it, not just in the Chesapeake Bay but across the nation for other island restoration projects, to be able to reduce these storm impacts.” A couple of articles about the model have already been published; and once finalized, the model will be available for anyone to use. The hope is that it will enable completion of more natural breakwater projects by the Corps. As Jeff notes, sharing how EWN is being applied in the districts is important as it serves as a model for other districts.   Eddie, a Riverine Practice Lead, describes some of the challenges St. Louis District faces in its riverine systems, which he notes have been engineered for decades. “We're having to go back and reimagine the way that we're implementing solutions, finding other ways that we can, for instance, have navigation on a system but also create additional habitat without increasing flood risk. It's really important to understand that there are many people with diverse needs out there that we need to accommodate. The solution to both of these problems are Engineering With Nature fundamentals—looking at this as a system and incorporating other people's benefits and needs and partnerships.”   Dave, a Riverine Practice Lead, has been doing innovative work in Omaha District: “It's been neat finding ways to incorporate nature-based features, not only in ecosystem restoration projects but across the full spectrum of our mission.” He adds, “There's a lot of talk about aging infrastructure throughout the country. Maybe levees aren't something that a lot of people think about when they think about aging infrastructure, but some flood risk management infrastructure, including levees, are almost a hundred years old. In large rural areas along the Missouri River, they've been damaged by floods and been repaired in place. Over time, it takes a toll. As we repair flood risk management infrastructure, we're partnering with conservation programs and NGOs and thinking differently about constructing things like setbacks. These can help address ecosystem restoration while improving the infrastructure because you're able to rebuild to modern levee design standards that are more resilient and can withstand over topping without as much erosion damage.”   As we close, Jeff highlights the value of the EWN Practice Leads: “This group of Practice Leads are creating real boots-on-the-ground projects and they're expanding the practice of EWN in their own work, while also being leaders, coaches, and mentors for others that they work with on a regular basis.” Sarah and Jeff invite the Leads to return for Season 4 Episode 3 to talk about how they're solving challenges, advancing EWN implementation through the EWN Cadre, and sharing what they are learning with other practitioners.   Related Links EWN Website ERDC Website Jeff King at LinkedIn Jeff King at EWN   Elizabeth Godsey at LinkedIn Elizabeth Godsey at EWN Mississippi Coastal Improvements Program     Danielle Szimanski at LinkedIn Danielle Szimanski at EWN Coastal Storm Modeling System (CSTORM) Swan Island Restoration: Engineering With Nature (EWN) Principles In Practice   Edward Brauer at EWN USACE St. Louis District: An Inland Proving Ground   David Crane at EWN   EWN Implementation Cadre Network of Engineering With Nature EWN Atlas Series   EWN Podcast S1E5: Collaborating to Create Wildlife Habitat While Restoring Islands and Improving Community Resilience EWN Podcast S2E1: Expanding Engineering With Nature EWN Podcast S4E1: Scaling UP, UP, UP with CSTORM and EWN

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is continuously analyzing business procedures to identify areas to encourage process improvement, build more efficient workflows, and increase the overall mission execution. USACE strives to safely deliver the mission on time and within budget. To help USACE achieve this goal, they have a cadre of business process improvement specialist across the organization who work to not only improve the way the organization does business but also incorporate the voice of the customer into various business procedures. In this episode, we chat with Mr. Kevin Fuqua, the Business Process Improvement Program Manager at USACE Headquarters and Ms. Maria Kopka, Planner and Lean Six Sigma Green Belt at the St. Paul District, to learn more about how the Corps is working to improve business procedures to ensure we deliver high-quality projects in a safe and timely manner.

After a structural collapse disaster, the eyes of the public are intensely focused on search-and-rescue efforts. Less familiar is the work of a special team from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) laboring behind the scenes to ensure the safety of those efforts. The USACE Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) program deploys specially trained and equipped structural engineers to augment FEMA US&R task forces. They monitor structural conditions, mitigate hazards, advise leaders, and assure mobility throughout a disaster site to enable rescue and lifesaving operations. ERDC plays an important role in this effort, providing both personnel and knowledge. On the latest episode of the Power of ERDC podcast, we talk with Jeff Qunell and Dr. Oliver Taylor about this world-class team that rapidly responds to some of the nation's and the world's most challenging rescue operations to prevent a compound catastrophe. Qunell is a structures specialist at the USACE South Pacific Division and is also program manager for the USACE US&R program. Taylor is a senior researcher at ERDC's Geotechnical and Structures Laboratory and a member of the USACE US&R team. We discuss the role of the USACE US&R program (4:08), how it began (8:01), past deployments (11:30), the Surfside condominium response (12:23), how the team keeps its skills sharp between deployments (22:30), how they develop training and national standards for structural collapse response operations (24:10), and the role ERDC plays (27:54). Visit https://www.PowerofERDCPodcast.org for more information.

How is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) driving innovation?  Dr. David Pittman, Director of the USACE Engineer Research and Development Center, joins AUSA's Dan Roper to discuss USACE Innovation Summit 2021, an event to showcase state-of-the-art work happening across the Corps and how USACE is shifting to a culture of taking chances with forward-thinking innovation.  This second annual event will not only emphasize technology but other essential aspects of innovation including business practices and people. The virtual symposium, taking place 25-29 October 2021 is free to attend, but please register in advance. Guest: Dr. David W. Pittman, Director of the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center and Director of Research and Development and Chief Scientist, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Host: COL (Ret) Dan Roper, AUSA's Director of National Security Studies   Resources:   19 May 2021 - AUSA's Army Matters Podcast episode with LTG Spellmon Special Edition: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers   USACE Innovation Summit 2021 Innovation to Impact: Leading from the Future Virtual Event – 25-29 October Web: www.usaceinnovationsummit.org   U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) Web: www.erdc.usace.army.mil   U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Web: https://www.usace.army.mil/   Recommendations for future topics are welcome via email at podcast@ausa.org.

Season 3 of the Engineering With Nature® Podcast launches October 6. It's been a big year for Engineering With Nature! Host, Sarah Thorne, recently talked with Todd Bridges, Lead Engineering With Nature, United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), about why and what's coming up in Season 3. As Todd notes: “there's a whole range of things that make this year a big year, including the fact that Congress recognized Engineering With Nature in very formal way by including it within the budget, which brings importance and urgency to execute.”  We'll be talking about the new policy directives and measuring the benefits of natural and nature-based solutions. Our guests from the new EWN Proving Grounds – Mobile District, San Francisco District and St Louis District – will discuss how they are integrating EWN approaches into their work. And we'll talk about EWN's recently launched International Guidelines on the Use of Natural and Nature Based Features for Flood Risk Management that provide technical practitioners the tools and knowledge needed to plan, design, engineer, and construct NNBF projects.   In Season 3, our focus is on creating the future with EWN. As Todd says, “the idea of nature-based solutions has a history that goes back many decades, but it's gained focus, credibility and energy in the last 10 years or so. It is emerging and growing and dynamic. It's exciting to be a part of that.”   Join us for Season 3 as we discuss the how innovative EWN approaches are being applied to a range of challenges including climate change, coastal resilience, flood risk management, and more.    You can join the conversation by going to the EWN website www.engineeringwithnature.org or wherever you get your podcasts.     Related Links: EWN Website ERDC Website Todd Bridges at LinkedIn Todd Bridges at EWN NNBF Guidelines        

Today I will be speaking with an employer from Iowa who is looking for volunteer Workampers for the 2022 season to work in a remote part of the state, but not too far from Des Moines. Jessica Heath is a park ranger with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project at Lake Red Rock, Iowa. Nestled in central Iowa, about 35 minutes southeast of Des Moines, Lake Red Rock is the largest lake in the state. It was made in 1969 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) erected a dam along the Des Moines River to create an 11-mile-long lake and 35,000 acres of surrounding land offering bountiful recreation opportunities. The project is home to six federally-managed campgrounds as well as three others operated by the state and county, including a primitive wilderness campground managed by USACE that is accessible by paddleboat or a short hike. There are 641 campsites at Lake Red Rock. In addition to camping, many people enjoy boating, canoeing, kayaking and swimming. The lake is known for catfish and striped bass. Spring and fall seasons attract a number of hunters seeking white-tail deer and turkeys. An 18-mile, paved bike trail guides visitors along one side of Lake Red Rock where they can enjoy some spectacular vistas of surrounding countryside. There are also 10 marked hiking trails and even a water trail for paddlers. The project is technically open year-round because water below the dam never freezes and people like to fish in all seasons. It's for that reason that eagles like to hang out at the lake. Ranger Heath hires about 60 Workampers every year to staff campgrounds, day-use areas or the visitor's center from mid-April through October. At that time, the weather can turn cold, which forces staff to winterize campgrounds. Jobs are scattered throughout the project, but center around five developed campgrounds. Most Workampers typically live in the campground they are assigned or near the recreation areas they oversee. Some jobs involve custodial work taking care of bathrooms and shower houses as well as keeping sites free of litter. They also take care of fire pits at the park. Workampers use Gators, or side-by-side utility vehicles, to travel around the park or along trails looking for debris. Gate attendants collect fees from visitors, check people into campsites and serve as hosts at the main recreation areas. They drive through the park several times a day ensuring there aren't any problems and helping to educate visitors about park rules. Maintenance jobs require Workampers to fix things, refurbish picnic tables and help with landscaping chores, like brush removal. People working at the visitor's center answer phones, sell passes, greet people seeking information, pass out literature and look after various displays and animals. Ranger Heath starts looking for Workampers for next season in early November, just after the current season draws to a close. Whether the job is staffed by a couple or solo, Workampers typically volunteer a minimum of 20 hours per week, per position. Couples have the option of splitting job responsibilities between themselves, such as each performing 10 hours of work apiece. However, Lake Red Rock also actively recruits solo Workampers each season. All Workamping jobs are volunteer; however, they receive a free full-hookup campsite with water, sewer and 30- or 50-amp power connections. Although the nearby marina is not managed by USACE, its contractors do offer discounts on pontoon boat rentals to Workampers. Rangers host a potluck dinner for Workampers early in the season to help them get to know each other, and another one toward season's end to recognize volunteers for their work. They also receive small gifts, like windsocks, metal yard signs or engraved glass coffee mugs, as well a framed certificate highlighting the total number of volunteer hours contributed to USACE. Volunteers also plan their own potluck gatherings with other Workamper...

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Mississippi Valley Division (MVD) Commanding General Maj. Gen. Diana Holland hosted a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Virtual Forum on July 15, 2021. The topic for the forum was ‘In the Valley: The Reasonable Accommodation Process', and panelists included Stacy Sigman, Natural Resource Manager for the Vicksburg District Lake Ouachita Field Office, Willie Day, MVD Equal Employee Opportunity (EEO) Manager, and Rachal Deahl, Rock Island District EEO Manager This particular discussion focused on the panelists' individual roles associated with the RA process. Topics included how to request a RA, a supervisor's responsibility, the Disability Program Manager's role, an actual real example of a RA request that was processed, and RA's related to COVID.

The field of civil engineering allows us to positively impact the lives of many people and make a huge difference in our nation. Even though getting through our schooling and professional exams can be really hard, the end result of all this hard work is well worth it. As our guest today put it, “The nation needs engineers and will always need engineers. And if you stick with it, you'll have great opportunities”. Today's guest is none other than Lieutenant General Thomas P. Bostick, a graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, an instructor of mechanical and civil engineering at West Point, and the 53rd Chief of Engineers of the U.S Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). During his tenure as Chief of Engineers, he worked on the recovery from Superstorm Sandy, completed the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal Borgne Surge Barrier in New Orleans, which won the 2014 ASCE Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement Award, prevented the 2011 Mississippi flood from being as destructive as it could be, and much more! Mr. Bostick is a living example of how engineering can really impact people's lives and keep them safe during natural occurrences, as well as help the nation get back on its feet again after being disrupted by such natural disasters. With amazing stories about leadership, comebacks from failures, and the importance of mentors and the engineering profession, this episode will definitely inspire you in your studies and life. Resources (some links are affiliate links) Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick - https://thomaspbostick.com/meet / contact@thomaspbostick.com Winning After Losing: Building Resilient Teams, by Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick - https://amzn.to/3o6Pckj U.S. Military Academy at West Point - https://www.westpoint.edu Air Force Academy - https://www.usafa.af.mil U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - https://www.usace.army.mil The Inner Harbor Navigation Canal Surge Barrier received the ASCE's 2014 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement Award - https://www.asce.org/templates/press-release-detail.aspx?id=10312 PPI is our partner to help you ace your FE and PE exams. Use our discount code of CIVACand our link to get 15% off of any book you order - http://www.civilengineeringacademy.com/ppi Built Bar - http://civilengineeringacademy.com/built The Ultimate Civil PE Review Course - https://civilpereviewcourse.com The Ultimate Civil FE Review Course - https://civilfereviewcourse.com Haven't joined up in our free community? What's wrong with you? J/K. Ok, just go there and join a group of like-minded civil engineers! - https://ceacommunity.com Check out our Youtube Channel for more content, live sessions, and much more - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPeFLBZ2gk0uO5M9uE2zj0Q If you need exams, solved problems, or courses, make sure to check out our home base. We can definitely help you on your journey to become a professional engineer. - https://civilengineeringacademy.com Reach out to Isaac - isaac@civilengineeringacademy.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/civilengineeringacademy/message

LTG Scott Spellmon, USACE Commanding General and 55th U.S.  Army Chief of Engineers joins us to educate our listeners on how far reaching the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) support and expertise spans across the world. Learn about their various missions, cutting-edge projects from the engineers and research mission area, and how the Corps will continue to provide engineering support for emergency operations – COVID-19 pandemic and natural disaster response efforts. For more information on US Army Corps of Engineers check out the resource section below.   Recommendations for future topics are welcome via email at podcast@ausa.org.  Guest: LTG Scott A. Spellmon, USACE Commanding General and 55th U.S.  Army Chief of Engineers   Hosts:          Nzinga Curry, AUSA's Education & Programs Director         LTC Brittany Lloyd, AUSA's Army Fellow    This episode is brought to you by GEICO.      Resources:  US Army Corps of Engineers Web: http://www.usace.army.mil/   Social Media Handles: FB: @USACEHQ Twitter: @USACEHQ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/us-army-corps-of-engineers/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/CORPSCONNECTION

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Mississippi Valley Division (MVD) Commanding General Maj. Gen. Diana Holland hosted a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Virtual Forum on April 29, 2021. The topic for the forum was ‘In the Valley: Female Leader Perspectives', and panelists included the top female Deputy District Engineers for Programs Project Management (DPM) throughout the region; Rock Island District DPM Kim Thomas, St. Louis District DPM Susan Wilson, and Vicksburg District DPM Pat Hemphill. This particular discussion focused on women in the workplace and their perspectives. Topics discussed included personal testimonies, mentoring and leadership roles, negative stereotyping , challenges associated with women in the workplace, COVID impacts and future recommendations.

Today's guest is Major General David Hill, who is second in command of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). In his role he guides more than 36,000 civilian  employees and 800 military personnel who support 250 Army and Air Force installations, and lends his expertise to more than 110 countries! He has served our country for over 30 years, been involved in numerous foreign operations, such as Desert Shield/Desert Storm and has been a dear friend to both Nick and Cole for a long time.Throughout the episode we discuss the path Hill took during his time at West Point and the experiences he's had which shaped his career today, how to motivate your team, how to overcome the challenge of low morale within your group, and much more! Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/the_quest_podcast/Follow us on Twitterhttps://twitter.com/TheQuestPodRemember to GET AFTER IT!

Problem-solving, technology, and public service all combine when you work as an engineer for the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Dr. Michael Sterling, PhD, is a lead water resource engineer at the US Army Corps of Engineers, Southwestern Division, and he oversees missions related to water supply, flood prevention, hydroelectric power, and more issues affecting large swaths of the USA. Dr. Sterling also discusses how he came to USACE from the fields of chemical, civil, and environmental engineering, and how to help young people get on a similar path. Related to this episode: • US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE): https://www.usace.army.mil/ • USACE Southwest Division (SWD): https://www.swd.usace.army.mil/ • Geographic Information Systems (GIS): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_information_system • Intel International Science Fair (ISEF): https://student.societyforscience.org/intel-isef • ROTC = Reserve Officer Training Corps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_Officers%27_Training_Corps • Society of American Military Engineers (SAME): https://www.same.org/ • American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE): https://www.asce.org/ • 2015 Black Engineer of the Year Awards Gala: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yda663HthKw Subscribe and find more podcast information at: http://www.k12engineering.net. Support Pios Labs with regular donations on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pioslabs, or send one-time contributions by buying us coffee: https://ko-fi.com/pioslabs. Thanks to our donors and listeners for making the show possible. The K12 Engineering Education Podcast is a production of Pios Labs: http://www.pioslabs.com.

Louie Bush with Bowman Consulting and Steve Hutsell with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) join host Curt Sumner to discuss the topic of Civil Information Management.