The Penn State Environment and Natural Resources Institute will hold its next Water Insights Seminar March 20 featuring Dr. Melinda Daniels of Stroud Water Research Center presenting on Multi-Strategy Whole Watershed Restoration for Ecological and Human Resiliency.
Watershed restoration has always presented an opportunity for addressing both ecological and human resiliency concerns, yet quantifying and communicating the connections between the two has been challenging.
This has resulted in segmented, piecemeal restoration funding with limited ecological or human resiliency benefits.
We appear to be in a phase of opportunity to produce larger, connected, holistic watershed restoration with clear and quantifiable improvements in both human and ecological resiliency.
In this session we showcase a demonstration watershed restoration effort funded following Hurricane Sandy that employs multiple in-channel, floodplain, and hillslope strategies to restore hydrologic and water quality function to a headwater tributary of the Brandywine Creek watershed with dual goals of human and ecological resiliency to large magnitude disturbance events as well as persistent climate and land use change pressures.
Dr. Daniels holds a BS in Natural Resources from Cornell University, a Masters of Research in Environmental Science from University College of London, England, and a PhD in Physical Geography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Her specialties include fluvial geomorphology and river restoration science and policy, with emphases on in-channel flow hydraulics, channel erosion, large river planform dynamics, human impacts on hydrologic and geomorphic regimes, river restoration assessment, and the interconnections between hydro-geomorphologic and ecological processes in stream ecosystems.
Her work has been funded by federal, state, local, and non-governmental organizations including The National Science Foundation, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, The Nature Conservancy, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and has resulted in over 40 peer-reviewed publications.
Her current research focuses on legacy disturbances to watersheds in Great Plains, Rocky Mountain, and Mid-Atlantic river systems including effects of grassland grazing on prairie headwater stream geomorphology and sediment transport dynamics, the effects of past forest harvesting practices on woody debris dynamics in the Rocky Mountains, the effects of large and small dams on hydrologic and geomorphological dynamics, modeling impacts of climate change on coupled human-watershed systems in the Central Great Plains, long term research on the effects of riparian reforestation, experiments with innovative practices for watershed restoration, and the role of biological ecosystem engineers in regulating stream processes.
She serves on the Environmental Advisory Board to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Before joining the Stroud Water Research Center she was a tenured Associate Professor of Geography at Kansas State University.
Click Here to watch a short video about her work at Stroud.
The Seminar will be held in Room 102 Forest Resources Building at Penn State in State College from Noon to 1:00. Click Here to attend the Seminar by webinar (sign in with your name and email).
Click Here for the full schedule of Water Insights Seminar series from Penn State’s Environment and Natural Resources Institute and recordings of past Seminars.
Other Archived Water Insights Seminars:
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