Riparian Rap

The Alix Digital Controller is shipping!

2012-02-09T19:58:00.001-06:00

We're very happy to report that, after over a year of intense R&D, our new Alix controller is shipping.

It's designed for advanced teaching and research with our Emriver models.

Using an open-source Arduino hardware-software interface, the Alix controller allows precise control of water flow. It also meters and displays flow rate, shows accumulated run time and flow, and automatically runs hydrographs.

The controller uses the model’s pump as a flow sensor; a neat idea we developed way back. See our support page for more.

The controller is back-compatible with all our Em2 models. It’s an extra on our new Em2 and Em3 models, and costs US$650.

The hardware and software are open source, and we hope to see users hack away. Its USB port allows easy connection to other computers.

Students could, for example, do real-time plotting of hydrographs as they run, coupled with time-lapse photography of channel changes in the model.

Development of this instrument turned out to be much more time-consuming and expensive than we planned.

It’s not that hard to make something that works, but to make it mass-producible, durable and super-reliable without making cost too high is not easy.

We named the controller after Chris Alix, a genius developer, good guy, colleague, and friend who designed the controller’s circuit board and wrote the software.

Our Lily is published

2012-02-07T13:19:00.000-06:00

Lily takes a grab sample, March 2008

LilyHwang was knee-deep in Broad Hollow Creek in Freeburg, Ill. when she answered acall warning her of an inland hurricane heading her way. She was collecting a water sample forher master’s thesis, and the rain had already started. She leaned over an automated stormsampler, screwdriver in hand, trying to repair it as the rainwater soaked herback.

Ifthe storm sampler’s sensor didn’t trip as waters began to rise, her data wouldbe no good. So she finished therepairs before heading to safety.

Wehired Lily as Ecohydrologist after she finished her master’s because we admiredher commitment to her research and her work in river conservation.

Lastweek, Lily’s data was published in the journal Water, Air, & Soil Pollution, in an article entitled Whole Catchment Land Cover Effects on Water Quality in the Lower Kaskaskia Watershed (J. Miller, J. Schnoonover, K. Williard & C.Hwang).

In the article, theauthors look at the effects of land cover on water quality in southern Illinois.

Lily and her colleaguesfound elevated levels of several nutrients (including orthophosphate, ammoniumand nitrate) and E. coli inagricultural and urban areas, and orthophosphate and E. coli levels exceeded the USEPA criteria in bothareas. Likely sources of theseelevated nutrient and fecal levels include fertilizer and runoff. Sewagesystems, particularly in urban areas, may also be another contributing source.

In short, fertilizers usedfor agricultural purposes are ending up in streams, and they’re changing thebalance of plant and animal life. Meanwhile, bacteria that grow in fecal matter are showing up in thestreams, too, likely from livestock and urban sewage systems.

“Knowingthe sources of water toxins is important,” Lily says, because it helps landmanagers understand and improve management practices.

Forexample, she says, problems arise in sewage systems that were built decades agothat didn't account for the possibility that sewage can overflow and mix withsources of drinking water.

Lily'srole in the study helped researchers "get to the beginning of the story ofurban [development]" and how it affects watersheds, she says.

"People will developthe land, whether we want them to or not," Lily says. But understanding problems withdevelopment that have occurred in the past will help land managers improvepractices in the future.

Aside from land managers andcity planners, Lily stresses the importance of educating young people about theinterconnectivity of a watershed. She hopes that to younger generations, water conservation, and everysmall thing that helps or hinders it, will be as recognizable as recyclingprograms are to people her age.

Which is why we’re so proudto have Lily on our team. She hada strong commitment to our mission long before we found her, and she continuesto work out of her passion at LRRD as our community educator, curriculumdeveloper, consultant and researcher.

We release our first Em3

2012-01-16T18:01:00.000-06:00

We sent our first Em3 into the wild last week.

Kevin Brewer, a professor at Olivet Nazarene University, drove down to Carbondale from Bourbonnais, Ill. to pick it up.

We've spent a lot of hours over the past year designing, redesigning, building, and testing the Em3. We noticed a gap between the Em2 and the Em4, and wanted something big enough for complicated demonstrations and research, but small enough to store and travel.

Geology students and professors test drive their Em3 at Olivet Nazarene University.
Photo from Olivet's Geology Blog.

Professor Brewer and his team have been blogging about their Em3; check out what they have to say here.

We took the Em3 to the GSA and AGU meetings this year, and were thrilled to see hundreds of professors, researchers and students take interest in our newest model.

And as always our amazing team worked together to make this happen -- from last-minute adjustments to paperwork and logistics to everything in between.

Our Nathan graduates from SIUC

2012-01-16T18:00:00.000-06:00

"I go to church everyday," Nathan once told me. "The woods."

Nathan poses with his congratulatory banner outside of LRRD headquarters

Rain or shine, under clouds or sun, in humid hundred-degree weather or an 8-below February day, you can find him in his sanctuary. Hiking through the woods, wading creeks. Restoring hiking trails or cleaning trash out of rivers. Or photographing beloved landscapes in the Cache River Valley.

Out of his love and respect for the plant and animal kingdoms, for the harmonious, natural balance of the earth, Nathan has made a hobby, an academic discipline and a career. His passion for protecting land, water and air led him to study forest resource management at SIUC, where he enrolled in January 2009.

And it led him to work for LRRD, where we strive to educate students, politicians and the public about how rivers behave and how to manage them sensibly.

Nathan teaches at Carbondale New School

We hired Nathan as prototyper in December 2010 while he was in his junior year at SIUC. This December, he graduated with summa cum laude honors.

Nathan proved himself to be an amazing student; with his 3.9 GPA, he was on the Dean's List all six semesters he studied at SIUC. He earned the SIUC Environmental Ambassador Award twice for his outstanding service preserving the Southern Illinois wild.

At Little River, he builds the models we ship all over the world. He has used those models to share his knowledge and his passion with preschool, high school and graduate students around our local community.

We're proud of Nathan's accomplishments and honored to call him coworker, employee and friend. We have been inspired by his ability to juggle a seemingly impossible schedule of full-time studies, weekend volunteer work and his job here at LRRD.

Upon his graduation, we congratulate him and look forward to working with him full time.

A video greeting from Little River Research.

2011-12-21T18:20:00.002-06:00

A happy holiday video in a few of the languages spoken at LRRD. I have such amazing colleagues.

The awesome multilingual (and keyboard playing) kids are Meriam's Adam and Radia, and the sweet vocals in French are from the three of them. (I rocked the cowbell.)

Amazing last day of AGU 2011.

2011-12-09T23:47:00.001-06:00

Today we finished an amazing five days at AGU in San Francisco.

We planned for months. Meriam, Lily, Christina, and Alee took care of complex logistics. Nathan, Jim, and I built and packed parts for the new Em3.

We worked together when a shipper lost half our stuff, and celebrated its recovery and arrival 15 minutes before the exhibits opened on Tuesday.

Hundreds of scientists and students visited our booth, many with strong interest in using our models for teaching and research.

Dozens of scientists from outside the United States left cards; from France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

Lily was her usual awesome self (especially with the little visitors) and our volunteer, SIUC-IGERT PhD candidate Anne Hayden helped with setup, teardown, and the many times when we had twenty or more visitors at once.

Tonight Lily took us through bustling downtown San Francisco to get the best in Thai food, ordered in the native language, of course.

Thanks to everybody.

SIUC students in the LRRD lab

2011-12-08T16:47:00.001-06:00

Students armor a stream using vegetation in the Em2

Graduate and undergraduate students in SIUC's watershed management class visited our lab today.

Our prototyper, Nathan, hosted them as they experimented with the effects of construction in rivers.

It's always a joy to see all those hands in the Em2!

We've all spent a lot of time doing community outreach and education this year; from day camps to elementary schools to postgraduate labs, our team has taught hundreds of students around Southern Illinois.
It's what we're here for.

--Alee

Nathan and SIUC students perform a lab exercise in the Em2

SIUC students build around a model culvert in the Em2

AGU Day Two. Wow!

2011-12-08T07:28:00.001-06:00

Another incredible day, with hundreds of interesting visitors from all over the world.

AGU Day One, we dodge lightning.

2011-12-06T21:44:00.001-06:00

We went to bed last night after arranging plans B, C, and others for our lost plastic media, including coffee grounds and plastic shipped up from Long Beach.

Here you see the happy, frantic unpacking of the lost shipment this morning, ten minutes before the exhibits opened.

We were visited by hundreds of scientists from many counties.

Lily worked her magic with a shy little girl from France.

Wonderful day.

LRRD peeps made this happen, thanks.

Lightning strikes us at AGU.

2011-12-06T00:17:00.001-06:00

The Fall AGU Meeting in San Francisco is amazing. Twenty thousand students and scientists from all over the world.

We've wanted to be here for years, but it's so expensive. About $15,000 for a booth, with all expenses accounted for.

We're finally here after months of planning and study, of logistics, travel, hotels, shipping. We arrived a day early, accounting for any possible problem, delayed flights, illness, whatever.

But our shipper (YRC) lost half our stuff; including all our plastic media.

A bad, rare thing, a lightning strike at the worst time.We hope it'll be found and delivered tomorrow. We're working on other plans, but there aren't many options when you're thousands of miles from home.

Photos are Lily and Anne Hayden, an SIUC grad student whose travel we funded in exchange for a little help.And Callan Bentley goofing with Lily at the AGU Social Media Soiree tonight.

Emriver Em3 at AGU

2011-12-02T18:01:00.001-06:00

Lily Hwang and I will set up our new Emriver Em3 at AGU in San Fransisco next week.

Here you see Lily at GSA, a CAD drawing, and Lily, Christina, Alee, and Nathan celebrating the first Em3's arrival in October.

The Em3's form comes from my two decades of experience using and refining these models.

By design, the Em3 is portable, so it doesn't need dedicated lab space, and can be used outdoors.

But it's big enough for serious research, and we're working on instrumentation and many other options.

We're going to have a blast at AGU, please drop by!

Emriver Em2 video overview.

2011-11-23T18:21:00.001-06:00

Our Emriver Em2 in two minutes, in English, by our Alee Quick.

More to come: Below, a collection of outtakes and languages from the original shoot. All LRRD staff, family, and friends from Carbondale.

An Em2 goes to Deutschland (annotated).

2011-11-17T21:08:00.001-06:00

Today we celebrated our first export to Germany!

We shipped an Emriver Em2 to Dr. Harald Stollhofen at Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Lehrstuhl für Geologie.

Click the photo above to enlarge and see who built this unique river model and sent it across the Atlantic Ocean.

We're wearing funny hats because we also celebrated birthdays for Lily and Allee.

BYU Em4's first day.

2011-11-10T18:55:00.001-06:00

This video captures most of the Em4's first day at BYU's Department of Geological Sciences.

Our Em4 models will energize thousands of science students (look at them!); with this fourth model installed, we're confident many more will follow.

We're celebrating that.

Thanks to my wife Kate, who believed in and supported my work. To my colleagues at LRRD who helped build, pack and ship it, and to Warren Sauer, owner of Sauer Machine in St. Louis, where all the big metal parts were made with great care.

And to the staff, faculty, and students at BYU, who were universally welcoming, helpful, and as you see here, excited about the Em4.

Thanks to Toby Dogwiler at Winona State who demonstrated his Em4 for visiting BYU faculty.

Special thanks to faculty Randy Skinner and Jani Radebaugh, and student Steve Herbst, who was a huge help with final assembly.

LRRD Dive(s) In!

2011-11-04T22:19:00.000-05:00

SIUC student volunteer Jen teaches fifth graders
around the Em2 at Dive In!

Today I taught for the first time since I joined the Little River team, at Dive In!, an Illinois EPA-funded education event hosted by SIUC's Touch of Nature Environmental Center.

Of course, I couldn't have done it without Lily's help (and training over the past week), and we had three wonderful student volunteers from SIUC.

As always, we're happy to use our models around our community. It's why we build them!

--Alee

BYU Em4 students learn science.

2011-11-03T20:09:00.000-05:00

This morning we finished installation of an Emriver Em4 at Brigham Young University's Department of Geological Sciences.

This afternoon Jani Radebaugh used it in her Geomorphology class for the first time.

Look at these students learning science. My reward.

Thanks to Randy Skinner, Jani, wonderful students, and other BYU staff and faculty.

Em4 lands at BYU, Day One.

2011-11-01T20:27:00.003-05:00

Brigham Young University got an Em4 today.

Thanks to students, faculty, and staff.

More tomorrow.

Project Eco R.O.V.E.R. and LRRD at Saturday Science

2011-10-31T21:39:00.001-05:00

On Saturday, Little River Research & Design collaborator and friend Andrew Podoll launched a fundraising endeavor for his Project Eco R.O.V.E.R. at Carbondale's Farmers' Market, in an event he called Saturday Science.

A conceptual sketch of the R.O.V.E.R., which will
feature an Emriver model in its cargo space

Andrew's turning an old charter bus into a mobile science classroom, which will include river models built by us.

Andrew is using kickstarter.com to fundraise. Check out his site there.

Andrew teaches with our Em3 model at Saturday Science

We brought and Emriver Em2 and Em3 to the Farmer's Market, and Andrew taught dozens of kids and adults who visited Saturday Science.

Good luck, Andrew!

Andrew Podoll and Saturday Science visitors with the Em3 and the Eco R.O.V.E.R.

Some big shout-outs for Little River!

2011-10-28T16:41:00.000-05:00

We're thrilled that some of our friends and collaborators are using our models for great work in education, research and outreach, and blogging about it. We get to work with some remarkable educators.

Matt Kuchta has posted videos of his experiments in the Em2 on his blog. Check this video in which he filmed the Em2 under UV light, and placed fluorescent plastic BBs in the stream to observe their path.

Fluorescent Emriver Stream Table from Matt Kuchta on Vimeo.

Matt ads on this post:

Sometimes there comes a product or concept that completely transforms the way you see things. This has happened to me recently when my lab got its Emriver stream table.

That's exactly what we LRRD stives for, thanks!

And our collaborator Andrew Podoll, director of Eco R.O.V.E.R., helped teachers from Park Community Charter School in Kaukauna, Wisconsin unveil their Em2, with coverage from local newspaper the Times-Villager.

Fifth graders learn about streamflow. Thanks to Kristen
Podolak for sending us this photo!

We also heard from Kristen Podolak from the University of California at Berkley, who used her Em2 to teach dozens of fifth graders.

Thanks to everyone for sharing your experiments and experiences!

Loading an Em4 bound for BYU.

2011-10-26T22:17:00.000-05:00

Today we loaded an Em4, the fourth, onto a truck bound for Brigham Young University.

Years of work realized and a big machine moved with the help of wonderful colleagues and friends.

Photos by Alee Quick.

Time lapse LRRD at GSA fun!

2011-10-19T08:28:00.000-05:00

Our trip to GSA this year was incredible. We spent months planning and many hours in final preparation. Everybody at LRRD -- Nathan, Meriam, Alee, Christina, Lily, and I -- played an important role.

And my wife Kate took vacation time to join us, something we all appreciate! We were very excited to debut our new Em3 model, a three-meter model that will fill the gap between the Em2 and Em4.

We were dissapointed Nathan couldn't make it to Minneapolis; he's in his final semester of classes, and we want to make sure he maintains his near-perfect GPA.

I'm deeply thankful for such awesome colleagues, thanks to everybody.We saw many new and old clients, and really enjoyed meeting colleagues from all over the world. I tried to get that flavor into this video, I hope it works!

LRRD at GSA Minneapolis

2011-10-11T21:00:00.000-05:00

Em4 at GSA Minneapolis from Steve Gough on Vimeo.

A movie and photos from GSA 2011. Ending months of preparation followed by a couple of crazy weeks packing equipment and driving it up in a truck; flying nearly all of LRRD into Minneapolis to help.

We've had hundreds of cool visitors. Thanks to all the geobloggers and tweet pals who mentioned us.

Too tired to caption the photos, but thanks to my LRRD peeps and to the many who use our models who stopped by to say hello.

SIUC helps LRRD load for GSA!

2011-10-05T18:34:00.000-05:00

http://www.siu.edu/

Today, after months of planning and preparation, we loaded a sixteen-foot truck bound for GSA--Minneapolis.

SIUC students from all over campus formed human forklifts to muscle the big Em4 on board.

From forestry, geography, geology, zoology, and fisheries, and elite NSF-IGERT grad students.

Student chapters got donations, and six pizzas disappeared.

Thanks students! And to LRRD peeps for a wonderful, exciting day.

The new and improved emriver.com

2011-10-03T13:05:00.000-05:00

By Alee

A screen shot of the new home page

Our new website design has finally arrived!

Lily, Meriam and I spent many, many hours writing, designing, troubleshooting, and editing, and it's finally paid off.

The new site is powered by WordPress, with a theme design from BytesForAll.

It's locally hosted by the fantastic Arthur Agency.

Please let us know what you think of it!

Korean Four Rivers filmakers visit LRRD

2011-09-30T21:03:00.001-05:00

We build our Emriver models to help students and stakeholders understand complex river behavior.

Anywhere in the world.

Today we hosted documentary producer SahoonHong and his cameraman Seong Rim Lee from the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS),the South Korean equivalent of our PBS.

They’re investigating the controversial $17BFour Rivers Project, summed up in this Science article.

Using our Emriver Em4, we demonstrated how river manipulations like wing dikes and dredging change river morphology; I hope we'll inform river engineering and management on this project half way around the world.

Fluvial Photography at LRRD

2011-09-08T15:45:00.000-05:00

By Alee

Alee teaches Lily to use the GigaPan

Over the past couple weeks, I've been testing out our new GigaPan Epic Pro system, which is a robot that guides a camera to take nearly perfect panoramic pictures. The GigaPan software stitches the photos together, and you end up with an extremely detailed shot, which you can then zoom in to see fantastic detail.

We picked it up because we think it will be a powerful tool to use with our Em4 model, especially in conjunction with close range photogrammetry (CRP).

Last week I photographed the Em4 during and after a delta-building run, and you can see the images here. Zoom in to see fluvial features formed during the run.

Our Ecohydrologist, Lily Hwang, has also started testing the photos taken with the GigaPan with CRP. We think we can use these pictures to build point clouds, which will be more accurate and efficient than taking all of them the old-fashioned way. We hope to have some results soon.

I've also been experimenting with ImageJ image processing and analysis software. ImageJ offers a ton of plugins to aid analysis, and I'm hoping to use one that maps the amount of color in a photo to study our color coded modeling media.

Color coded modeling media in the Em4

Graph showing RGB values in a portion of the
photo to the left, made using the Color Inspector 3D
plugin for ImageJ

Emriver Em4 coded media and CRP updates.

2011-09-06T14:19:00.001-05:00

Draft, delta building and stratigraphy, Emriver Em4 model. from Steve Gough on Vimeo.

We are moving fast with our Em4 work, partly in preparation for GSA in Minneapolis, where I'll be giving a talk about use of color coded by size (CCS) media and also Close Range Photogrammetry (CRP). We're also now trying out a Gigapan system.

Here you can see the draft video of a run last week in which we built a delta. We lowered base level (the standpipe) to cut channels through it, and then sliced it to show various stratigraphy. I'm very happy with the results! The music is just a placeholder, if it bothers you, turn it down, there is no narration.

You'll find a Gigapan of the sliced sediment here: http://gigapan.org/gigapans/85919/

And here's an older video showing details of the CCS. Note that we're experimenting with a finer red colored fraction added since this video was made.

Education and Outreach at LRRD.

2011-08-26T17:41:00.004-05:00

Christina and Nathan teach at EcoU summer camp

[Ed. note: This is the second of what I hope are many posts written by our new Creative Director Alee Quick.]

At LRRD, we have a strong commitment to using our products for education, and we're happy to put our models and people to work around the community, usually pro bono.

Throughout the summer, we've been visiting schools and day camps, and we hosted Ph.D. students from SIUC participating in IGERT, which is NSF's interdisciplinary training program.

Lily has been training Nathan and Christina to take over some of the educational stuff, and Nathan has conducted a few teaching events himself at the EcoU and FishU summer camps and at Carbondale New School, where he taught students between pre-k and high school ages about erosion and stream armoring using the Em2.

The IGERT Ph.D. students spent a morning in our shop learning about fluvial geomorphology and practicing stream surveying in the Em4.

We're proud that Nathan and Christina have stepped up to take part in outreach events. With more people pitching in, we look forward to upcoming teaching opportunities as the school year gets underway.

Students at the SIUC EcoU summer
camp with the Em2

SIUC IGERT students Aaron Nickolotsky and Anne
Hayden measure a channel in the Em4

Nathan and Christina Complete the Little River Team

2011-08-24T19:18:00.003-05:00

Nathan teaching students at Carbondale
New School with the Emriver Em2.

[Ed. note: This is the first of what I hope are many posts written by our new Creative Director Alee Quick.]

A couple of students who’ve worked part time for LRRD transitioned to full time this summer, and we’re very happy about that!

Nathan Speagle joined us in December of 2010 as Prototyper. He is a forestry student at SIUC with only one semester to go before graduation, most likely with numerous honors. He has become part of our teaching team and, as he seems to do with everything, excelled at working with young students at local environmental camps. Nathan came to us with great skills in electronics, and builds our Em2 flow controllers and also parts for our 4-meter Em4 models.

Christina in the LRRD office, with a
rubber chicken.

Christina Bovinette has been with us as a part-time Research Assistant for almost a year. She has also joined our teaching team, and spent part of the summer traveling around to schools and day camps teaching kids with the Em2. She went to her first conference with Little River in June -- she drove with Lily to South Carolina for the National River Rally, where she did some networking and outreach with the models. She also recently made her first Em2 sale, solidifying her role as part of our sales sector.

And of course we love having them around every day. Aside from being talented and hardworking, they're fun and friendly.

Martian water in Carbondale, Illinois.

2011-08-05T16:14:00.002-05:00

McEwen et al.'s Science paper on Martian water yesterday is exciting stuff!

Especially for us, because our models can simulate fluvial geomorphology on Mars. The plastic media we use is particularly good at forming sapping channels, which are groundwater-driven gullies. Here you see Earthling Callan Bentley observing a few in our lab. In this photo we've just lowered the standpipe (base level), and initiated several sapping channels.

For us the sapping channels are sometimes an unwanted feature. They form because the coarser mixes we use allow free subsurface flow, which emerges with enough volume to erode the particles and form channels.

Just like on Mars, probably. This stunning image of the Nanedi Valles (click to enlarge, via) shows tributaries to the main meandering thread that are probably sapping channels -- these appear at the center and lower right.

Ryan Anderson's "The Martian Chronicles" blog gives a nice overview of these features in his roundup of talks from a 2008 AGU meeting.

Today's Times article has more links.

And I have to give props to the late great Marie Morisawa, who taught me "sapping channels, unlike gullies formed by overland flow, have round heads."

UPDATE: JPL press release with links to images and analysis.

Top photo via NY Times, credit to NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Alison Quick joins LRRD.

2011-07-26T17:53:00.001-05:00

Alee Quick recently joined LRRD as our CreativeDirector. Last spring shegraduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with dual degrees in Spanishand Journalism. Alee’s been astudent of Spanish conversation, reading, and writing for 14 years. She started off her undergrad studiesin journalism with an emphasis in magazine writing, but after a summer studyingin (and falling in love with) Spain, she added Spanish as anotherconcentration.

She earned both degrees with cum laudehonors. While an undergrad, Aleeworked as a translator for the Center for the Study of Mathematics Curriculumat the University of Missouri, as a reporter at the Columbia Missourian newspaper, and as a creative writing intern at Landis + Gyr.

Alee comes to LRRD as a writer after heracademic and professional training in news, feature and creative writing. As a photographer, Alee was trainedusing 35mm film, and has spent many delightful hours processing film anddeveloping prints in a darkroom, but made a seamless jump to digitalphotography. Alee learned videography while working as a reporter for the Missourian’s website.

At Little River, she’ll be putting all of theseskills to work – in the two months she’s been here, she has revised the Em2User Manual, edited and (almost) finished theredesign of our new website, and taken tons of pictures for the manual, blogand website. She’ll be doing manythings, including writing, making movies, photography, and graphic design.

Alee’s always been active in progressive politics and environmentalcauses, and is thrilled to forward our environmental mission, especially ourcommitment to education.

And we are thrilled to have her awesome skills, fantastic sense ofhumor, musical talents, and much more!

Emriver adventures in Canada; the ASEE conference.

2011-07-04T20:25:00.002-05:00

UPDATE: Having problems with the YouTube embed; try this link.

Lily and I traveled to beautiful Vancouver last week to attend the American Society for Engineering Education annual conference.

Vancouver is an amazing city, and the venue was spectacular; a gigantic waterfront building with a vegetated roof.

We met so many interesting people. It seemed most were mechanical or electronic engineers, two of many engineering disciplines.

We especially enjoyed talking with the few dozen engineering professors, most of them in civil engineering, who understood the strength of our models in teaching river engineering and fluid mechanics.

Normal noises at LRRD.

2011-06-06T18:29:00.000-05:00

We've been crazy busy at LRRD for the last few months. I used what little blogging time I had to cover the lower Mississippi floods, and haven't reported the cool things we've been up to. Here are a few photos.

We've done a lot of pro bono outreach in local schools lately. Lily in particular has generously donated her own time for a lot of this.

We'll soon be reporting on fantastic results we've had working with the Em4 and its color-coded media using close range photogrammetry.

And thanks to Anne Jefferson and Ron Schott for stopping by last month! Soon Callan Bentley will be here.

Part of a redesigned standpipe system for our Em4 and in-progress Em3 models.

Setup for Em4 runs with close range photography and sediment transport sampling.

Meriam teaches with our Em2 at Giant City School near Carbondale.

Start of a May Em4 run using close range photogrammetry.

Meriam, Christina, and Lily as the latter two leave for the National River Rally conference in North Carolina.

School kids dive in at an outreach event. I love how hands dart into the Em2!

Never ending flood suffering. A recipe.

2011-05-19T09:49:00.005-05:00

This flood is causing terrible human suffering and economic loss. In southern Illinois, thousands are in shelters, many here in Carbondale.

It's easy to focus on that suffering now, and talk about simple short-term fixes. But only a sober view of this disaster will prevent more of the same.

Yesterday USA Today did a nice job of interviewing scientists and policy experts, and put together a good article on how we can move forward after this devastating flood.

The New York Times has done a terrible job, running both vapid, poorly written "human interest" stories and a pointless op-ed piece by David Welky last week. No science, no policy, no real reporting on why this, or any other flood, happens.

If our media and political leaders won't tell people why these things happen, we're doomed to witness them again and again. The human and economic costs are horrible, and not sustainable by any measure.

More of the same is a certain recipe for continued loss and suffering.

USA Today recently ran an op-ed article by Republican Representative Jo Anne Emerson.

I opposed the destruction of Birds Point because the authority to do so discounts the well-being of Missourians as well as the ability of levees at Cairo, Ill., to hold back floodwaters. The possibility that blowing up the levee saved others in the system is cold comfort to Missourians who also have a right to flood protection.

Returning the river to its natural state represents a high ideal for environmentalists who live in safer places, but reducing flood protection is an unthinkable violation of property rights and liberty for Americans who have lived beside the river for more than a century.

Rep. Emerson gives us exactly the argument that will insure more flood loss and human suffering.

Her constituents in the Bird Point - New Madrid Floodway knew, or should have known that it was a bought and paid for component in a massive emergency flood control system. A system mostly paid for by people living outside the floodplain in "safer" places. A system that has given untold economic benefits to the people living in it by protecting their land from flooding for over 80 years.

That Floodway was specifically designed for the monster flood we now see, and operated by policy, not politics.

Rep. Emerson and others know that, and so should the people living there. She, and other leaders, should explain the hazards and true cost of living in flood prone areas, but instead make political hay. This is irresponsible because it will inevitably lead to more loss and human suffering from floods. Instead of calling for a reevaluation of the levee system and the human settlement in the floodway, she calls for a rebuilding of exactly the same system, and points a finger at "environmentalists."

And calls operation of the Floodway a "taking" of private property. It is easy now to say these things to people who see themselves as victims of unjust federal policy. Not so easy to stop it from happening again.

There are victims in other places here: The massive big river flood control works on the Lower Mississippi, including levees, pumps, access roads, bank protection and never-ending federally-subsidized maintenance, keep flood off cropland, but they significantly increase stages in larger floods.

So they make the floods higher, and more damaging, in other places. That's one reason the Birds Point - New Madrid Floodway was constructed.

UPDATE: Anne Jefferson has posted an excellent piece on levees and flood control.

When the Birds Point levee was blown up (according to design, policy, and plan) in 1937, stage at Cairo dropped seven feet.

Several of my neighbors here west of Carbondale lost the contents of their first floors as the Big Muddy River (a tributary to the Mississippi) backed up to to a stage nearly three feet above the previous record. Surfaces I suspect haven't seen much water since the end of the great Pleistocene floods were inundated.

I agree with Rep. Emerson that there has been a "taking of private property" in this flood. Not from her people in the Floodway, who have enjoyed vast economic benefits, and were living on land with deeded, paid for flood easements.

That "taking" was like giving somebody $10 and asking for $1 back. Eighty years later.

The taking has been from thousands of others, well outside the Mississippi River's floodplain, damaged in this flood by unnaturally high stages. And from federal taxpayers.

The huge federal flood control systems along our big rivers are the very definition of pork barrel politics. They pay gigantic benefits to those living in the floodplain. The contractors who build them, and their local employees, make money. When commercial development follows higher levees, land values skyrocket. Federal tax dollars further subsidize flood insurance, because the commercial insurance market never will; it's too risky. Nobody could afford the true cost, so taxpayers living on high ground subsidize it. And also the costs to fight floods and then clean up afterwards.

No private insurance company will offer insurance for homes in a floodplain. Shouldn't that tell us something? Where are market forces in this? Why don't we see private mainline levees along the Lower Mississippi?

In this time of Republican calls for smaller government and less spending, this big entitlement, the "right" to protection from floods seems to be off the table. And no talk of "free market" solutions; it's just not economically sustainable to protect cropland with huge levees along our big rivers. It requires massive federal subsidy.

Nicholas Pinter's 2005 Science piece remains a defining paper on this topic. The development behind federal levees in the St. Louis region he describes is shocking, and when that land, flooded in 1993 and now covered with $billions in development, goes underwater again, the destruction will dwarf that we're seeing at Birds Point.

Top illustration; turn of the century drainage project in southern Illinois; below, figure from Pinter, 2005.

The New York Times falls down on this flood.

2011-05-16T21:22:00.004-05:00

As this historic flood moves through the Middle and Lower Mississippi Valley the paper of record gives us articles like this, here with my annotations.

Nothing about why this flood happened, no history, no science, no informed analysis.

Nothing that might prevent the suffering the article describes from happening again.

Bigger, stronger levees are not the answer.

2011-05-15T22:09:00.004-05:00

Thanks to Jon Remo for this guest post.

As the Mississippi River Flood of 2011 reaches the Gulf of Mexico much attention has been paid to the system of levees, floodwalls, flood retention dams and floodways constructed under the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project (MR&T) after the "Great" Flood of 1927. It appears the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the Mississippi River Commission have successfully used the flood control tools of the MR&T project to protect the Mississippi River Delta (Lower Mississippi River Floodplain) from yet another potentially catastrophic flood. The MR&T project has endowed the Lower Mississippi Valley with the most extensive and likely the greatest flood protection system in the United States. Some have estimated that the system of levees and floodways can protect the majority of the Mississippi River Delta from up to the 750-year flood. However, as we have seen from media reports, not all of the Delta's inhabitants benefited from the system’s protection and thousands of others suffered from intentional flooding as emergency floodways were activated.

The USACE estimates over $13.1 billion have been spent on the MR&T project since 1928 and remind us that the project is not slated for "full" completion until at least 2030. The Corps likes to trumpet their estimated 24 to 1 cost benefit ratio for this project. While this benefit sounds impressive, the economic analysis does not account for the maintenance or operation of the system, estimated today to be at least $130 million annually, flood fighting costs, or other environmental externalities (USACE, 1998). Despite the cost, the success of the MR&T flood control system has renewed calls for bigger and stronger levees for many flood prone areas. However replication of such large and extensive flood control works elsewhere in the United States has proven economically and politically infeasible and unsustainable.

Efforts to replicate the MR&T style of structural flood control, even in the heyday of these projects (the 1930s to World War II and again after the war into the 1960s), outside the lower Mississippi River Valley were often scaled back to lower protection levels (generally 100 to 500-year flood protection for urban areas and 50-year or less flood protection level for agricultural areas) because of costs. The cost of constructing many levees was borne largely by the Federal Government with little or no local contribution. However, once completed, the Federal Government turned these levees over to local levee and drainage districts which were put in charge of collecting taxes for the maintenance of the levees and associated flood infrastructure. In many areas there was not a sufficient tax base to support proper maintenance.

The thinking when the levees were built was people and business would move into the newly protected areas and a tax base for support of these structures would materialize. This has often not been the case, particularly in the agricultural levee districts. However, underfunding of levee maintenance is not exclusively a rural issue. Underfunding of levee and floodwall maintenance in urban areas is common. As a result, many levees and floodwalls (hundreds to thousands of miles of them) throughout the United States have been deemed by the USACE as either minimally acceptable or unacceptable (i.e., the levee would not perform as designed) condition. Under Public Law 84-99 (PL 84-99), levee sponsoring agencies that fail to live up to maintenance obligations are classified as inactive and become ineligible for federal levee repair and assistance funds. Maintenance and operating costs are frequently a financial challenge for floodplain communities, and these costs are rarely considered in cost-benefit calculations for levee projects. For example, a recent estimate by the USACE found that up to $500 million is needed to address critical maintenance issues for three levees (Wood River, Chain of Rocks, and Metro East) along a 50 mile stretch of the Mississippi River near St. Louis.

Recent cost benefit studies by the USACE have underscored that large scale levee enhancement or expansion are not cost effective. For example, the Upper Mississippi River Comprehensive Plan (UMRCP; USACE 2008) looked at the costs and benefits of a number of different levee and floodplain management strategies with the goal of reducing flood damages along 970 miles of the Upper Mississippi River (UMR). Plan H of the UMRCP, with an estimated cost of $3.9 billion, proposed adding 500-year levees to both urban and agricultural areas along almost all of the UMR. However, despite Plan H benefit/cost ratio of 0.05 (5¢ of benefits per $1.00 invested), it was endorsed by the Mississippi River Commission and floodplain stakeholders and continues to enjoy considerable local support and political play each time Federal stimulus or other legislative action has been considered to fund this project.

Despite a bias toward structural flood control measures, the UMRCP did consider a plan, Plan J, which called for the removal of all agricultural levees and using buyouts for homes not protected by levees while maintaining the 500-year protection level in urban areas. Plan J had an estimated total cost of $3.2 billion which is $0.7 billion cheaper than protecting everyone to the 500-year flood level. This plan would have significantly reduced the flood exposure along the UMR floodplain and decreased the flood risk in urban areas because floodwater would have more area in the floodplain to be stored lowering the water heights on the urban levees. In contrast, Plan H would have promoted further floodplain development, increasing flood exposure, increased flood levels, and consequently higher flood risk for the urban levees because of the reduction in floodplain storage created by the higher levees protecting agricultural areas.

Unfortunately, Plan J has received little support from floodplain stakeholders and their political representatives.

Elsewhere around the world and in forward thinking regions within the United States, officials and stakeholder groups are either working toward or have implement plans similar to the UMRCP Plan H. For example, the Dutch government has fundamentally shifted its approach to flood control to a policy of “more room for the rivers,” meaning creating new storage and conveyance space rather than continuing to raise the levee. On the Meuse River, France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands adopted the Meuse High Water Action Plan, focused on land use activities from a water perspective, longer storage and slower release, and space for the river. These programs are not purely academic proposals. Since 1988, the Integriertes Rheinprogramm of the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, has reduced peak flood stages to 1950 levels by adding 212 million m³ of storage on the floodplain. In the Netherlands, the “Room for the Rhine” doctrine was adopted in 1997, and the Dutch government has dedicated 3 billion to a broad toolbox of levee alternatives (Pinter, 2005).

In the U.S., after last years’ devastating flood on the Cumberland River, Nashville is planning to expand its current greenway along the river which will provide increased water storage and protection from floods. The program Nashville Naturally includes goals to increase the metro park system by 30%, protect more than 10,000 acres of floodplain and other sensitive natural areas and establish large-scale preserves in every bend of the Cumberland River. In 1997 Pierce County, Washington set back nearly two miles of levees along the Puyallup River; this action reduced flooding in the City of Orting, Washington during two recent floods in 2003 and 2006.

Scientists, engineers, floodplain managers, and decision makers in the U.S. have realized for decades that the optimum strategy for reducing flood losses is to limit or reduce infrastructure on the floodplain. However, most federal flood control policy continues to encourage floodplain development by financing construction and enhancement of levees, further underwriting the risk of flooding, or eliminating incentives for responsible local decision-making. Federal flood control spending disproportionately supports the construction of levees and dams, encouraging greater floodplain development. In areas where extensive development has occurred we will need to maintain adequate flood protection. In areas that are relatively undeveloped we must resist attempts to expand or enhance flood protection because it only increases future flood risk and history has shown it is not fiscally sound nor in most places sustainable without continuous and substantial subsidy from the Federal Government.

Dr. Jonathan Remo is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow and Adjunct Assistant Professor at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. His areas of research and expertise include fluvial geomorphology, hydrology, hydraulic modeling, river management, flood loss modeling, and pre-disaster mitigation planning. His research and professional projects have been supported by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Illinois Emergency Management Agency, and the National Commission of Energy Policy.

Illustration: Nineteenth century floodfighting in Louisiana and the evolution of levees there through 1914, from USCE.

LRRD appreciates Lily Hwang on her one-year anniversary.

2011-05-13T21:12:00.003-05:00

My wife Kate met Lily as she was finishing her MS in Forestry at SIU-Carbondale and told me "you need to talk to her, she's amazing."

I did, and she is, and we hired her, and Lily Hwang has done amazing things for us.

She's a brilliant scientist and teacher.

She volunteers time on weekends for environmental education. And works extra hours for Little River Research. A lot of extra hours.

And always she's kind, caring, and funny, watch the movie.

Thanks Lily, from me and all of us, for everything.

Wader-clad teevee clowns cover snakes.

2011-05-11T09:07:00.001-05:00

The Daily Show - Weatherman-Based System of Flood Height Measurements
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

A comedy break: Jon Stewart, one of my heroes, has weighed in on the ridiculous coverage our media give to floods.

I can't stand to watch TV news coverage of any kind, but yesterday decided to give it a try, and watched in horror as Diane Sawyer, in waders, showed video of a harmless water snake and described it as "deadly poisonous" and "having no fear whatsoever of humans."

No history, no coverage of flood policy, no mention of why so many houses are underwater in Memphis.

Snakes: I've worked in water all my life, grew up in the southern swampland, and (bonus) have been bitten by a poisonous snake (it's not a big deal but you get to talk about it forever).

Snakes are the last thing people need to worry about in a flood like this, but invariably the idiotic "snake infested floodwaters" meme emerges.

Because so much of the media (TV in particular) thinks its job is to entertain and frighten people. And flood control policy is not very entertaining. So we get shallow, meaningless coverage of a historic, devastating flood.

So we can look forward to more flood suffering and economic loss, none of which, I'm sure, will involve snakebite.

Here's a link if the embedded video gives you problems.

Birds Point flood coverage, blowing a fuse.

2011-05-09T21:06:00.002-05:00

Today the receding Mississippi and Big Muddy River let me drive to work without a long detour. My neighbors are filling demolition dumpsters with flood damaged stuff.

Flooding causes terrible human suffering and reporters rightly cover that. Compelling stories, but terrible science and policy if we ignore the root causes. The press has it wrong on Birds Point.

Typical phrases: "Blowing the levee at Birds Point was necessary to save Cairo. A last ditch desperate attempt. Farmers were sacrificed for a decaying city. Unfair. Arbritrary. Stomach churning."

Desperate, always desperate.

Blowing up the Birds Point levee to open the Birds Point - New Madrid Floodway was automatic, legal, and predetermined by an eighty-year-old plan.

Nobody made a desperate decision. The Army Corps played this drama, and it's hard to blame them. They blew up a levee in the middle of the night, a terribly dangerous and complex operation.

If I turn on my coffeemaker and toaster oven at the same time, I'll blow a fuse.

Did the fuse make a desperate, arbitrary, last ditch attempt to save my house, at the expense of my coffee and toast, from burning by electrical overload?

No, it tripped at 15 amps, as designed.

The Birds Point - New Madrid floodway is a bought and paid for, debated to death, eighty year old fuse. Beyond the politics, it is no more than that.

After the 1927 flood, the Army Corps and Congress realized it wasn't possible to build levees along the Lower Mississippi River to contain the largest floods. So the Corps designed and built in fuses, and Birds Point is one of these.

Missouri politicians have been lobbying on Birds Point for years. Colleague Nicholas Pinter's ongoing (unpublished, thanks) research shows that the trigger level for opening the Floodway has been raised from the original 1927 design level of 55 feet at Cairo to 60 feet. The Floodway was opened at nearly 62 feet last week.

So local politicians have long been aware of the Floodway's function, and lobbied to raise the the flood level at which it would be used.

Over eight decades, as they enjoyed highly subsidized protection from massive Federal levees.

If our press can't understand this simple relationship, in the midst of this historic flood, what hope do we have for sustainable flood policy?

Thanks for links from Wired Mag's Clastic Detritus, and NASA's Earth Observatory series.

Flood disasters are always old news.

2011-05-06T20:36:00.001-05:00

We're about to see the biggest Lower Mississippi flood in history. Parts of Memphis are being evacuated, and the Mississipi Delta may be in for the worst it's ever seen.

Terrorists who could never match these floods dominate the front page. Tornadoes, rightly so.

Shallow news coverage sets us up for another flood disaster. We'll never have a sustainable, just, flood policy without sober, scientific, post-flood policy development. We hoped for this after the 1993 floods, but it didn't happen.

Example: $2.2 billion in new development has occurred in the St. Louis area alone on land that was under water in 1993.

In 2007 SIUC's Global Media Research Center asked me to give a talk about media coverage of floods. The Center videotaped and published it.

In thirty minutes I cover flood science and how the media sees it.

If you're a reporter, please watch this. I promise you this (low quality) video will change the way you view floods and improve your reporting.

If you're interested in the crazy way media covers flood damage and poor black people (Cairo) versus, well, other people (farmers, guys who build merry-go-rounds), skip to around 30:00. And to 31:44 for stomach churning commentary by Fox News's Bill O'Reilly.

Giving and taking at Birds Point. Levees for Libertarians?

2011-05-05T09:05:00.001-05:00

The Cape Girardeau-based Southeast Missourian has done a good job during this flood, and today published a news article mentioning flood easements.

But it should have been on the Op-Ed page.

While acknowledging the 80-year old history and controversy over compensating farmers for flood easements; that is, paying the residents of the Bird Point – New Madrid Floodway for the right to use that land as an emergency floodway, the article ignored two important points:

--While farmers and politicians talk about a “taking” of land in the floodway, nobody mentions the very large “giving” that came about when the huge federal levees were built in the 1930’s. Land behind them rose greatly in value, and farmers there have enjoyed over 80 years of protection from them; and if they’ve paid at all, paid a small fraction of the cost for that protection.

--This giving was highly subsidized by the US taxpayers, few of whom will see any economic benefit from it.

At any time the Floodway residents could have taxed themselves (and indeed some “drainage districts” do this), built higher levees and bought themselves out of this. Why didn’t they? Because the system of big river federal levees to protect farmland could not exist without large subsidies from people living outside the floodplains. The farmland’s economic output could never support it.

The Missourian raises the specter of collectivization:

One corps [sic] official said the four floodways along the Mississippi River remind him of Soviet Union-era collectivization, taking individual property for the greater good.

What about the federal tax money taken from those of us living on high ground to build levees around the farmers at Birds Point?

The illustration is one of dozens from this document clearly spelling out operation of the Birds Point - New Madrid floodway. And this problem is not limited to the United States.

Floodways are for floods.

2011-05-04T20:25:00.003-05:00

Check out this NASA image from today and consider whether blowing up the Birds Point Levee might lower record flood elevations at places other than Cairo.

Only one major outlet I know of, the Wall Street Journal, got the Birds Point story right today, by mentioning flowage easements.

Landowners in the Birds Point - New Madrid Floodway knew, or should have, they were bound by flood easements. These easements say "If a huge flood comes, I may need to flood your property. I'm paying you for that right, $this much, now." The easement money is compensation for a reduction in land value.

Bought in the 1930’s (and some later, I’m not sure). Anybody buying land, for a house or farming, can see the flowage easement, paid for by the Federal Government, and know that, if the Mississippi River at Cairo gage hits sixty feet, land in the floodway will be intentionally flooded.

The people of the United States have paid for the right to to open that floodway as part of a designed flood control system. And also for design, construction, and maintenance of the monstrous federal levees that have protected the farmland in it for eighty years. A huge economic benefit.

When the Army Corps detonated expolosives to open the Birds Point - New Madrid Floodway, it was bound by law, not “last ditch desperation,” or debates over who on which side of the river works harder, or anything else. The Corps dutifully followed a well-debated eighty-year old plan that has the force of law.

Landowners were compensated when the Birds Point – New Madrid Floodway was built eighty years ago. So much so that the U.S. Justice Department halted the project, for a while, over excessive payments.

The reduced value of flood-prone land, whether there are easements in place or not, is built in to property values. People build houses in flood-prone places because it’s cheaper to live there, at least in the short term, if you’re lucky and the Mississippi doesn’t hit 60 feet on the Cairo gage.

From the WSJ article, quoting farmer Bryan Feezor:

"If I had known this was going to happen, that corn [he planted] would still be sitting in a bag," he said. He didn't buy crop insurance because he said it's too expensive in the floodway, even though the area was used to carry water only once before, in 1937.

The Floodway was very nearly used in 1983. Crop insurance is “too expensive” in the floodway because the risk is high, and insurance companies adjust cost to risk.

And nobody will insure a house in the Birds Point – New Madrid Floodway.

Birds Point myths, and shame on the New York Times

2011-05-03T21:42:00.002-05:00

Late last night the Army Corps of Engineers (COE) blew a hole in the Birds Point levee breaking windows (according to NPR) in a building where people living in the Birds Point – New Madrid Floodway had gathered to commiserate.

Press coverage is terrible.

Today a New York Times article featured a couple whose house was flooded. They had no insurance. Because nobody would insure them. Because they built a house in the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway.

Times reporter A. G. Sulzberger notes only that these folks were flooded after a big mean, unjust, government explosion. And they worked hard.

I’m sad for those people, and for this sorry reporting that does nothing to fix what led to the the destruction of these homes and farms.

I have flooded neighbors, only one road to my house is open. It’s terrible. We’ll see lows in the 30’s tonight in southern Illinois; people are cold wet, scared, miserable, and desperate.

But the typical response of the press – to focus on human suffering and tragedy at the expense of analysis of the cause of it, and then move on after the flood – enables our flawed and unsustainable flood policy and gives us more of the same.

I was disappointed to hear NPR interview one of the farmers bringing a class action suit against the Federal Government over the opening of the Floodway. With no mention of why the Corps opened it.

Here are problems, omissions, and misconceptions I see in our reporting and debate:

The COE arbitrarily decided, at the last minute or “in desperation” to destroy a perfectly good levee, and sacrifice hard working farmers’ homes and farmland to save a decrepit town full of poor Black people on the other side of the river.

The COE simply executed a plan according to law. An eighty-year-old plan any smart fifth-grader could understand. After the devastating 1927 flood, COE engineers developed a flood control system that was hotly and widely debated, and ultimately passed by Congress. It included “floodways” to carry monster floods like this one on parts of the Lower Mississippi. There was no other alternative; levees high enough to contain these floods can’t be built. The floodways shunt water onto the floodplain and lower flood levels. According to this plan, the Birds Point – New Madrid Floodway was designed, built, and then flooded, using dynamite in a 1937 flood, and in 1983 the COE very nearly used it again. Local government officials know about this history, and a homeowners who can’t get insurance or a mortgage, like those featured in the Times article yesterday certainly know why.

Ruben Bennett, 88 years old, featured in the Times article, lost a house when the floodway was first operated, according to plan, in 1937, and has now lost another one. Uninsured.

More on this from a TNC scientist. And link to documents clearly spelling out floodway operation.

The flooding of Missouri farmland to save Cairo was a “taking” of land by the Federal Government.

Huge federal subsidies built the levees on the Lower Mississippi. The farmers inside these levees, who’ve had over eighty years of protection from flooding, have paid a tiny part of the total bill for the design, construction, and never ending maintenance of those levees. The owners of the land in the Birds Point – New Madrid Floodway were compensated with cash payments and “flowage easements” for exactly what happened last night. There are some gray areas, it’s possible some of the landowners didn’t have flowage easements for farmland. But any house built in that floodway was in grave danger, farmland can stand flooding, no house should have been built there.

When the big federal levees were built, there was a great “giving” to the landowners who have enjoyed their protection for eight decades.

It’s a stupid, unfair plan, somebody should have changed it.

When the plan was put into place in the early 1930's, Cairo was white-owed, had 15,000 people and was thriving. Missouri Congressman Bill Emerson did try to change the plan, in 1987, and the COE did a big study, but found no economically feasible alternatives. The farmers in the Birds Point – New Madrid Floodway have had eighty years to challenge yesterday’s action, to buy back their flood easements, to move to high ground. People living in the Floodway have had plenty of time to debate this. It shouldn’t be done with 60 feet of water on the Cairo gage.

Thanks to the Southeast Missourian for a link-rich page that includes source documents.

Spectacular NY Times fail on Birds Point.

2011-05-02T23:44:00.000-05:00

Just as I finish a post on bad media coverage, the New York Times jumps in with a sad, example.

Nothing against Mr. Bennett. But he knows about flooding. From the article:

After growing up in the spillway,[sic, floodway] Mr. Allred left, working many jobs before persuading his wife to return to the country to farm. Six years ago, they built a house with their savings — about $100,000 — but were unable to get a mortgage or insurance because of the flood risks.

Emphasis mine. No mention of an eighty-year-old agreement that the land was part of the paid-for Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway. Mr. Bennett couldn't get a loan because he wanted to build in a designated floodway.

More from the article:

The record-setting 1937 flood — the only other time the levee was intentionally breached — destroyed his family home.

Staying to raise a family of his own, he watched the area transform into thriving cropland, rich with corn, soy and wheat. He ran a grocery store and a tire repair businesses that made him the best-known man in the spillway. A decade ago, he closed the store, and his wife died. But he remained. So did the risk of flood.

Mr. Bennet saw his home destroyed in 1937, in accordance with a well-known flood control plan for the paid-for Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway, and built there again. And the Times portrays him as a victim and mentions none of this.

Blowing up Birds Point; interview with Jon Remo.

2011-05-02T21:25:00.001-05:00

Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway operation, from undated Mississippi River Commission report.

Today I interviewed Jonathan Remo, a geoscientist at SIU-Carbondale. He and colleague Nicholas Pinter are accomplished experts on big river flooding and flood control engineering, with ongoing projects on the Middle and Lower Mississippi and a deep body of published work. Pinter’s 2005 Policy Forum paper in Science is a good starting point.

Thanks to Jonathan and Nicholas for help with this post.

Tonight the Mississippi River at Cairo (we say it KAY-roh) at 61.44 feet, nearly two feet above the 1927 record stage. The Lower Mississippi (which begins at the Ohio confluence at Cairo) will see record flooding, at least on the upper reaches of the Lower Mississippi. The levees there are old and untested; the Ohio did not flood in 1993 and the Lower Mississippi was spared.

The Birds Point Levee – Cairo conflict may end up as a footnote when this flood is over.

I hope to do a series of posts here covering scientific and technical issues neglected by the media and to shed some scientific light on what is an unsustainable flood control policy for much of the Mississippi River. (This is close and real for me; tonight I could grab my canoe, put in a few meters from my house onto backwater from the record high Big Muddy River, and get to New Orleans)

Word has just come from the Army Corps of Engineers (COE) will use explosives at Birds Point to put the floodway in operation. No novelist could imagine a greater confluence of race, class, nature, politics and 250 tons of explosives, now to be set off in the middle of the night. This is why our flood control policy is flawed. Floods create vast human drama and misery. We overreacted during them, and immediately after, and then forget.

Yesterday the Nature Conservancy’s Jeff Opperman posted an excellent piece on the history and politics of the Birds Point-New Madrid floodway. He notes the “blowing up of Birds Point” is not the last minute, desperate plan the media have portrayed, but a well-known one going back to 1927. The floodway was operated, with some assistance from dynamite, in 1937. The farmers in the floodway live there knowing this plan exists, as recently as 1983 the COE came very close to opening it, and in 1987 local politicians, with much publicity, tried to get the COE to build a different system. All this is documented in a recent report by the Mississippi River Commission here.

The function of the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway is well known to local residents, and farmers in the floodway were compensated by the Federal Government for flood easements. The floodway was paid for a long time ago.

Jonathan noted that state and local policy in Missouri, which somehow allowed about 100 houses to be built in the floodway, shares blame. In the 1980’s I worked as a river scientist in Missouri. I ran into strong Libertarian leanings, and some of the most hard-core of those folks farm land protected by big Federal levees. Who want government to leave them alone.

Something to address in our current national debate on budget deficits and entitlements? More on that in another post.

The Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway is part of a Lower Mississippi flood control system that includes several such floodways as an alternative to higher, more expensive, and more dangerous (when they inevitably fail) levees required to carry the design flood. The system was conceived and built after the devastating 1927 flood that made clear to engineers of the day that a “levees only” approach was unworkable.

The Birds Point – New Madrid floodway shunts about 550,000 cfs out of the Mississippi channel, and the levees that constrict it and raise river stage, onto its former floodplain. Recent analysis by the COE says this could drop stage at Cairo by seven feet. Cairo is now seeing about 900,000 cfs from the Upper Mississippi Basin 1,350,000 cfs from the Ohio.

Tonight the levees in Cairo are not in good condition, sand boils have formed and the city is under mandatory evacuation orders. Jonathan noted that 63.0 feet at Cairo – the current peak prediction – would not overtop the levees, but given their pre-flood condition and the length of the flood, would almost certainly cause them to fail.

Worst case: They might still fail after the COE opens the floodway tonight. We could see 100 houses lost in the floodway, much damage to farmland, and loose Cairo as well.

I’ll end this with a few of Dr. Remo's observations. At record stages, the discharge-stage relationship is unknowable. We can model this on smaller rivers, but a half-mile wide Mississippi at record stage is too complex. So prediction of flood elevations with increasing discharge becomes very difficult. Especially at confluences, and at Cairo now we have the mother of all confluences.

We’re witnessing the beginning of an unprecedented test of an 80-year-old flood control works on the Lower Mississippi River. Regardless of what happens at Cairo tonight, the system below it is old, not in good shape, not well understood, and about to see record flooding.

Blowing up Birds Point.

2011-05-01T21:39:00.004-05:00

Sandbagging in Cairo, 1937

UPDATE: Excellent post on this issue by TNC Scientist Jeff Opperman. I'm interviewing a couple of people and will follow up later today (May 2).

As promised, here are the best links I can find for news on the lower Mississippi flooding and the Birds Point levee situation.

At home I'm about 50 miles north of Cairo, Illinois, and 15 miles east of the flooded Mississippi; the Big Muddy River has backed water to within 30 feet of my house and flooded most of the roads leading to it.

Blowing up the Birds Point levee to save Cairo would fit into the best of Steinbeck’s novels. It has hydrology, geography, geomorphology, rich history, and the politics of race, class, cross-river conflict.

Flood control projects on these big rivers are unbelievably massive, the largest public works projects in history. Thousands of miles of earthen levees and, in cities like Cairo and St. Louis, concrete floodwalls. The levees are huge; near here they are thirty feet tall and over two hundred feet across at the base. Huge pumping stations lift tributary water over the levees during floods.

These works need constant money for maintenance. Mostly supplied by the federal government. All of it, after the 1927 flood, was conceived, designed, and built by the federal government. The big bottomland farmers in southeast Missouri Bootheel are very fond of these government-built-and-maintained levees. Rush Limbaugh comes from the Cape Girardeau there. You won’t hear him criticizing this entitlement.

Cairo, like New Orleans, was a great spot in the age of river commerce, but always geomorphically incorrect at the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi, highly alluvial and still strongly in the grip of Pleistocene fluvial geomorphology.

And now poor, seventy-percent African American. Sitting across from the the all white farmers in the New Madrid floodway, assigned in 1927 as a place to divert floodwaters from Cairo, which was thriving then.

Those floodway landowners, big farmers, in Missouri have been compensated, by the federal government, for their floodway status. Since the 1930’s, that land has been set aside for this purpose.

It's hideously complex. the science alone is crazy. Add the politics and I'm not sure what to do.

End editorial. News links I could find:

Southeast Missourian special web page with comprehensive reporting and many links to Army Corps documents, legal documents, weather, river stage information. Lots of YouTube video of flooding and flood fighting.

http://www.semissourian.com/flood2011

The Memphis District, US Army Corps of Engineers, has a YouTube channel.

And a Birds Point New Madrid Floodway Facebook page! Link, I hope.

St. Louis Beacon reporting: http://www.stlbeacon.org/issues-politics/280-washington/109995-birds-point-floodway-evacuated-as-army-corps-ponders-levee-detonation

Link and image rich Wikipedia entry for Cairo, Illinois http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo,_Illinois


Wonder dog JaJa navigating floodwaters from the Big Muddy River near Carbondale as we survey the road I usually take home.

We cross the Atlantic. Em2 in the UK!

2011-04-27T19:15:00.000-05:00

Our Emriver Em2 has made its first big ocean crossing.

Here you see David Simm (left) with technician Geoff Baker. Dr. Simm works at Bath Spa University, which offers undergraduate degrees in Geography, GIS and Development Geography.

Dave's Em2 will be put to all its best uses, including undergrad teaching, postgraduate teacher training workshops, GK-12 sessions with local schools, and student recruitment. All the good things for which it's designed (we're very happy about this.)

David is a fluvial geomorphologist; his doctorate research focused on radiocesium and sediment traps to measure rates of overbank sedimentation on lowland meandering rivers in the UK. Recently, he's been interested in river restoration and the role of River Trusts in stream rehabilitation. He says "I've an interest in pedagogic aspects of university teaching, so I'll be interested in how the Em2 and associated activities can be used to enhance student learning. This research feeds into our Changing landscapes Research Group."

Thanks to Dave for his kind patience as our Meriam deftly navigated complex export procedures.

Here you see Meriam, Lily, and Christina celebrating the event. And our Em2 map with the new addition.

Happy, cool, fun video of us.

2011-04-24T21:21:00.000-05:00

Last week we shot video to show our updated Emriver Em2 model. Here are a few clips.

This production is all in house, all in-family. Planning, video, post production, everything.

In eight languages. Our Meriam, from Morocco, speaks four (and teaches one) of them. And I love Lily's Thai greeting. Her German roommate was a natural, thanks Franzi!

We're struggling in this economy, but are doing great things. This little video shows our respect and compassion for each other and our work.

And how lucky I am to have such wonderful colleagues.

I'll edit all this into a new how-to and introduction to our Em2.

Geomorphically incorrect art #9.

2011-04-21T17:46:00.001-05:00

Another ad, this one from Outside. The mountains, white oak leaves, snails and mushrooms are true to form, but what's up with that water?

My alternate copy:

"Terrified wearers of shoes in which a person can run ran for high ground when the dam broke. You never took your feet off the porch rail."

Geomorphically incorrect art #8.

2011-04-09T17:39:00.000-05:00

Nothing funny about chronic angina, but this ad from a recent JAMA (click for larger image) made me laugh because the artist stiched together such a wide range of geomorphological and biological features.

And perverted science in several other disciplines to appeal to those in medicine.

I suspect the entire thing is fabrication. Can your students tell why?

This one is a gem for talking about plant/geology and microclimate relationships. See the lush green vegetation grading into a (sort of) mountain snowline?

Down the mountain, like a little golf course lake populated by off duty cardiologists, this fluvial system has no ugly exposed sediment between the lush green vegetation and the water's surface. Except for that inviting sandy beach in the foreground. No unsightly wave erosion or exposed floodplain sediments.

The fluvio-lacustrine heart would suffer from congestive-sedimentary failure, I think, if it could form in the first place, which I don't think it possibly could.

Can you challenge students to come up with an explanation involving earthquakes and, I don't know, maybe rapid climate and base level change that could explain at least some of this?

What's possible and what's not?

Geomorphically incorrect art #7.

2011-03-21T17:20:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned Leif Peng here before, his blog is fantastic-- he's a talented illustrator who shares images from the golden age of American print advertising.

Here's one with a geologic puzzle. Real rock or not? Not my field, but I'm guessing not, but only because this painting was very carefully composed and I think the illustrator made the rock fit the image. Maybe it's the most famous rock in Canada, guarded day and night by Mounties. I hope not.

Leif's original post here.

What to do with a dead canoe.

2011-03-18T18:16:00.001-05:00

Our building is perfect for us, but the lot is ugly. We're still climbing out of a recession start up; I can't justify money spent on aesthetics, but can't stand to see another spring pass without doing so.

Here you see a worn out Grumman canoe we're using as a sign. I did the design in Google SketchUp, and today Nathan and I built it, that's him watching Lily and Christina canoeing our ugly asphalt lot.

The other photos show Lily, Christina and our Fulbright Scholar Jean-Rene helping out. We're mocking up the sign; it'll ultimately sit out front, as you see in the last photo. And we're ripping out all the non-native plants (another story.) What do you think?

March 11 Japan tsunami in Onagawa.

2011-03-16T09:59:00.000-05:00

An indication of tsunami depth from Onagawa in Miyagi prefecture, one of the closest towns to the epicenter, about 40 miles northeast of Sendai (map). Via Canada's National Post.

Google maps is adding useful layers for study and analysis of the quake and its effects.

Callan Bentley at Mountain Beltway has an excellent summary of geophysics and vertical and horizontal displacement here.

Von Karman vortices in tsunami flows at Sendai airport.

2011-03-11T18:19:00.012-06:00

Callan Bentley asked me about the large vortices in this photo from the Globe's Big Picture series; I thought the answer was worth a post here.

UPDATE: I'll continue to add information of scientific interest regarding tsunami flooding and other phenomenon around the Sendai airport; two days after the event we have reports of horrific suffering and loss of life. I hope this discussion improves understanding of flood hydraulics and want to express my compassion and concern for the people of Japan.

The aerial shows tsunami flows through Sendai airport in northern Japan today. What you see are von Karman vortices. There are several "von Karman street" structures. The big ones at the bottom of the photo are being shed by something we can't see, off to the left (arrow one). At arrow two you see a small series that is interrupted by another structure at arrow three; which makes more that blend with those from the arrow one object. And more from another object at arrow four (click on the image for a larger view).

We see these vortices because the tsunami flows are moving in a homogenous sheet over the very flat and level surfaces of airport runways and taxiways. Fascinating regularity amidst the chaos of this tragedy.

I've rarely seen von Karman vortices in rivers; only around bridge piers, and then poorly expressed. Their formation requires vertical constriction and regularity, e.g. the atmospheric layers shown in clouds moving over Alexander Selkirk Island in the southern Pacific Ocean (from Nasa Earth Observatory).

The radio antenna of a truck I owned had a small wire wrapped in a spiral around it to disrupt the vertical sameness on which von Karman vortice formation depends--the vortex shedding makes car antennas, and sometimes overhead wires, sing if they resonate with the frequency of vortex shedding.

Here's a Nasa site showing von Karman vortices at many different scales.

UPDATE. Here's a morning after photo of the airport, and another photo of men building a raft on one of the buildings after the flooding; and there you seen planes and other debris moved by the tsunami. All from today's New York Times photo series. The floodwaters aren't draining well, either from clogged stormwater structures or quake related subsidence, I'm betting on the latter. I've seen a lot of flood damage, but the devastation in the Times series photos is unbelievable.

UPDATE: New video of leading edge of flood wave from inside the airport terminal. This thing is like a violent flash flood, except those are usually confined to small areas and narrow valleys; this is miles wide. Hard to imagine.

UPDATE: Akiyoshi Kenji (aki3) has published a Gigapan image of the area around the airport. And Callan Bentley has published an excellent summary of tectonics and displacement showing that that there has indeed been a lowering of surface elevation in many areas, so the flooding may be there to stay.

Another aerial Gigapan from the Geographical Survey Institute of Japan, taken on March 16, 2011.

Canon G12 and Pentax W90 cameras.

2011-02-26T14:37:00.000-06:00

Here I'll briefly review and recommend the Pentax W90 and Canon G12 for scientific work in the field and lab. Nobody’s paying me for this.

I've shot tens of thousands of photos with the predecessors of both cameras -- the Canon Pro1 and Pentax Optio.


Pentax W90.

The Pentax W90 (detailed review). Improved over the Optio, this camera is waterproof and ruggedized, with rubber armor all around. You can use it while digging into a streambank, with sand on your hands. And dip it into the creek to clean it. Controls are very intuitive and not at all fussy, something I demand for a basic field camera. There are other "weatherized" cameras, but Pentax pioneered this with the Optio and takes it seriously. I don't hesitate to put this camera under water. Image quality is very good in all the conditions in which I've used it.

Its macro capabilities are easy to use and perfect for scientific work -- it has a "1cm" macro setting you enable with two button presses for very detailed close ups and three small LEDs around the lens to illuminate these.

Canon G12 with flip out LCD

The Canon G12 (detailed review). There's something unsexy about a camera that whirs and pokes out a lens when you turn it on, but I've come to understand why this is a necessary evil. The Canon G series is widely used as a backup by photojournalists for a reason -- you can put it in a big pocket, but it performs like a digital SLR. And it puts controls you use most often in retro-35mm knobs on top. Practical, intuitive, fast, and cool.

You can't use this camera with sand on your hands, but otherwise it’s perfectly suited for serious science in the field and lab. With the lens retracted it's about the size of my big fist, and I can wrap that hand around it and shove it into its case without worrying about smudging the lens. Great for the field.

And has the Canon flip-out screen. You can hold it above your head or put it on the floor and rotate the LCD to view and frame your photos. I use this feature every time I use this camera and can't imagine being without it. Other companies are imitating it now, but Canon has it down.

Filters are essential for serious science photography. The G12 has a bayonet ring around the lens for accessories like a polarizing filter, essential for river scenes and aerial photography.

Canon sells filter adapters, but Lensmate has a new system that enables easy use of filters. With these adapters you have a camera that fits a cargo pocket along with sophisticated filter capability.

Lensmate also sells an adapter for use with telephoto and wide angle lenses.

The G12 shoots video that rivals that from our pro video cams. I’m now shooting most of our instructional video with it, see the example below. (Though the G12 has a very nice on-camera microphone, the sound in this video was dubbed later.)

A couple of weeks ago my new G12 was crushed by the rear door of a truck as we loaded an Em2 model. After minor surgery on our electronics bench it's bent, but works just fine! A very rugged camera!

My G12 was crushed by the huge rear door of an eighteen-wheeler. The frame was bent, but a little surgery freed up the jammed LCD and the camera works fine!

Taken with the G12 held overhead using the tilting LCD screen.

Both cameras have excellent macro capabilities.


The G12 does a wonderful job in low and mixed lighting. Here Lily and Meriam show off Lily's knitting handiwork in a combination of window sun and fluorescent light.

Fluid mechanics with wood and string.

2011-02-20T19:27:00.001-06:00

Here's a video featuring artist Reuben Margolin.

His work is beautiful and inspiring. The strings, pulleys, wheels, and beams in his sculptures mimic complex fluid mechanics.

His Spiral Wave (at 1:00) shows the vortex from a canoe paddle stroke. Very good.

Margolin's kinetic models look like digital wireframe representations. So why bother with a huge, complex physical model?

Because they're beautiful. And tactile, and so much more interesting and instructive than computer code. Margolin's work is wonderful reminder of why we build our models.

In a well made physical model of a river you can see and touch the whole process. Current velocity, bed slope, meander wavelength, the mechanics of cantilever bank failure, the building of dunes and bars. You can put your hand into the box and cause chaos, then watch the system adjust.

Pretty soon you're developing ideas about that system, investigating the pulleys and strings, then doing an experiment (science) and having a good time doing it.

Geomorphically incorrect art #6.

2011-02-18T20:41:00.003-06:00

Click for a larger version and you can see that Simpson's fans Jerry Lerma and Tim Hogan put this map together in 2002. It's their interpretation of Springfield. Cool idea.

Where do we start geomorphically? A tiny dam bordered by flatland forms Lake Springfield so close to another large lake, or maybe the ocean? And 13,000 foot Widow's Peak drains into the same lake in the space of what, seven or eight city blocks? That's some serious fluvial slope. I'm a big fan, but I can't remember debris flows in any episode.

This one is great for teaching both geomorph and city planning. Jerry and Tim seem to have abandoned the website that originally hosted this, so no link, but props to their creativity.

UPDATE: The comments section is for ya'll to add to my thin analysis. For example, why don't we see dams near the coast? What do the road patterns tell you, are they possible/ likely? Do I see a wetlands area just downstream of a dam? What about that tunnel through the mountains and the desert on the other side?

Bienvenue à LLRD, Jean-René Thélusmond !

2011-02-15T13:40:00.001-06:00

Jean-René Thélusmond is a Haitian Fulbright Fellow in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Jean-Rene has a BS in Natural Resources and Environment from the State University of Haiti. Jean-Rene has worked as an environmental project manager for the Haitian government and as consultant to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). He’s also worked as a consultant to Oxfam-Quebec.

Jean-René hopes to address continued environmental degradation in Haiti after finishing his environmental engineering training here in the United States. His research interests include water and wastewater treatment, river morphodynamics, environmental risk assessment, and remediation of contaminated sites. His multidisciplinary education includes work in agronomy, forestry, zoology, and general environmental work. Jean-René is clearly capable of combining skills and resources to generate valuable ideas. And he’s a great pleasure to work with. Jean-René is fluent in English, French, and Haitian Creole; he has a fair understanding of Spanish. (With Lily and Meriam, we can add Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, Italian, and Thai!)

Jean-René will be doing research using the Em4 model in our lab; we’re providing the lab time pro bono and providing other financial support. This is a wonderful opportunity for us to assist with his training and have this gifted young man work in our lab.

Jean-René est un étudiant Haitien boursier de Fulbright dans le département de génie civil et environnemental à Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Il a une license en ressources naturelles et environnement de l'Université d'État d'Haïti. Pour ce qui est de son expérience professionnelle, Jean-René a travaillé comme gestionnaire de projet pour le gouvernement haïtien et comme consultant pour l'Agence des États-Unis pour le développement international (USAID). Il a également travaillé comme consultant pour Oxfam-Québec.

A la suite de sa formation aux Etats Unis, Jean-René a l’intention d’adresser la dégradation continue de l'environnement à Haïti. Ses intérêts de recherche comprennent l'eau et le traitement des eaux usées, le morphodynamisme des rivières, l'évaluation des risques pour l'environnement et l'assainissement des sites contaminés. Sa formation pluridisciplinaire comprend l’agronomie, la foresterie, la zootechnie et l’environnement. Il est clair que Jean-René utilisera compétences et ressources pour faire aboutir sa recherche à des fins brillantes. C’est un plaisir de travailler avec lui.

Jean-René parle couramment l'Anglais, le Français et le Créole haïtien et comprend également l’Espagnol (avec Lily et Meriam, LRRD peut aussi ajouter à son répertoire de langues, l’Arabe, le Mandarin, l’Italien et le Thailandais).

Pour sa recherche Jean-René, va utiliser le modèle Em4 dans notre laboratoire; Nous avons mis notre laboratoire à sa disposition et lui fournissons également une assistance financière pour son travail. Quelle excellente opportunité pour LRRD de pouvoir encadrer ce jeune homme talentueux au sein même de notre laboratoire !

Thanks to Meriam for the French translation.

A month's worth of good news.

2011-02-08T21:00:00.000-06:00

Time for blog dump, I've neglected this place.
Because we've been overwhelmed with good things!

Here you go:

Lily spent last week in the Pacific Northwest at RRNW, attending talks and overseeing an Em2 model there.

Jean-René Thélusmond, a Fulbright Scholar from Haiti, has joined us; we're supporting his graduate work at SIUC; he'll be doing research in our lab with the Em4 model. Here he talks with Lily at the Em4.

And Meriam, Lily, and Christina celebrate our first Em2 shipment to the UK yesterday.

This week we ship an Em4 to the University of Quebec. Meriam's French has been handy!

Engineering students at SIUC are closing in on a method to track particle flux in our models using both magnetic and optical properties.

We (mostly Meriam) solved incredibly complex international shipping problems.

Thanks to all who've supported us. We're finally climbing out of the economic slump, and looking forward to good times.

A holiday delta run using our Em4 model.

2010-12-26T12:04:00.000-06:00

We finally had a little time to play with our newly-set up Em4, and did a casual time lapse last week. I haphazardly changed variables now and then over a two-hour run as we did other work in the lab.

The frames are taken every 30 seconds. I changed flow rate, sediment input at the upper end, valley slope, and "roll" or the side-to-side slope. I also raised and lowered the standpipe at the lower end, which affects base level.

I aimed for some nice dramatic delta processes.

If you're not familiar with the Em4, the plastic media (with a D50 of 1.0mm) is coded by size; the fine fraction is black/dark brown, the middle fraction is white, and the coarse fraction (up to about 2mm) is yellow. More at www.emriver.com and in this video.

Turn off the music if it bothers you, it's something I put together from Soundtrack Pro clips, and the edginess (and goofiness) is intentional.

Happy Holidays!

New faces at LRRD.

2010-12-17T18:42:00.001-06:00

Exciting times at LRRD! University budgets are in better shape. We have a lot of orders, are starting to export, and are expanding after two years in this tough economy.

We have a couple of new colleagues this week: Jordan Gibson (left), and (next) Nathan Speagle.

Jordan grew up in the Florida Panhandle and got interested in geology while watching his Dad drill water wells. He has a BS in Geology from the University of South Florida and great skills in writing and analysis. We're looking forward to curriculum development work from Jordan.

Nathan Speagle is a distinguished undergrad in SIU-Carbondale’s forestry program who'll be working part time. He came to our attention by doing a lot of volunteer work for a local land trust. Aside from his near-perfect GPA, Nathan has experience in construction, welding, and electronics.

Next around are Christina Bovinette, Lily, me, Meriam's son Adam who visited today, and Meriam.

I'm lucky to know all of them; we're going to have a great year in 2011.

Emriver Em2 user update 1.

2010-12-15T18:45:00.001-06:00

Regular readers please forgive me; I'll be using the blog now and then to help new users of our redesigned Em2 models. We've had a few of the inevitable annoyances that come with sending a redesigned instrument into the wild.

Including having shipments destroyed by UPS. Arrg. Thanks for your patience and understanding, new Em2 owners!

In this post I'll cover key changes, all in the plumbing system, that aren't covered in the old manual. We won't update the official manual until these are ironed out.

This short video describes how to hook up the power supply to the pump controller and pump. The simplified controller uses a single knob to change flow rate. We've stopped the presses on the original digital controllers until we work some bugs out, as I say in the video, we tried a bit too hard. We'll be shipping the final product to everybody when this is finished, free of charge. In the meantime, the simple "greybox" will work work fine.

Here's a diagram of the circuit. The GFCI is very important--it's the yellow device that prevents electric shock, please use it!

Click on images for larger versions.

Some early models shipped with an energy dissipater that included an inlet. These have proved both hard to build and fragile in the field; we're working on that, and as always will get the final design to you, and I promise it'll be bulletproof.

Today we discovered a little problem with the "greybox" controller. If the Anderson plugs on the pump and power cables weren't joined in our shop exactly straight, the plugs can come apart too easily and fall out. A strange little glitch.

We spent months researching and chosing these plugs. And we still like them. If yours don't hold well, either fix them by heating the shrink tubing and gently straightening them, or send them to us and we'll gladly take are of it.

In this case, quite literally "straighten it out."

And please don't hesitate to call us for help.

Geomorphically incorrect art #5.

2010-12-09T18:13:00.001-06:00

An illustration from the New Yorker in June 2006, some media network executives going over a waterfall.

Aside from riding a giant floating TV they were previously paddling on a placid stream, they're in a geomorphically absurd situation.

The illustrator clearly knows that trees grow straight up, but didn't learn much in art school about fluid mechanics and geology.

And next something from the Moon. A disaster on all fronts.

Geoscience teaching from another perspective.

2010-12-08T17:33:00.000-06:00

No post for nearly a month here. I've been overwhelmed with filling orders for our new Em2 geomodels. Our latest big challenge has been shipping logistics.

Not geology, exactly, but creating cutting-edge equipment and delivering it (undamaged, please, I'm talking to you UPS) to geoscience teachers at a reasonable price is certainly part of geoscience education.

And as complicated as the science itself, trust me!

Here you see our amazing crew shipping three Em2s in one day, a new record for us. Meriam Lahlou in the hardhat (very funny Meriam), Lily Hwang, and me.

And a new face, Christina Bovinette, an SIUC undergrad we're very happy to have working part-time at LRRD.

Full scale Emriver Em2 shipment begins!

2010-11-12T17:31:00.001-06:00

We're in full effect now on Em2 shipment; all the kinks are out and we hope to get a model to everybody on the waiting list by the end of November. We hope the overseas shipments won't be far behind.

If you haven't been following, we've completely redesigned the Emriver Em2 and ran into some problems with our supplier of aluminum parts (they were simply overwhelmed with work). This caused several weeks of delay. And of course we were swamped with orders while this happened!

Designing and building a practical stream table is one thing. Making it easily mass-buildable, reliable, safe, and easy to ship adds a lot of complexity. Streamlining the building-to-shipping process isn't easy, but is essential if we're going to keep these models affordable.

Lily and Meriam have worked very hard on this. We still have a lot to do with respect to inventory and shipping, but we're getting there.

We tried to ship Lily to California, but the UPS guy wouldn't take her.

Fun with cardboard (and geomorphology).

2010-11-09T19:25:00.000-06:00

We're a little loopy at LRRD now, from both overwork and excitement.

Today we moved the Em4 model we hauled to GSA-Denver off a truck and into our lab.

The rules of hydraulic similitude dictated a 4-meter length for the Em4. It's about the size of a car and a challenge to move. Thanks to the SIUC AFS students who helped.

And today we began full scale shipment of our redesigned Emriver Em2, both to North American and overseas teachers and scientists.

Here Lily strikes what she described as a "serious pose" with a ready-to-ship UPS-able Em2, and I have some fun with cardboard by way of thanking Lily and everybody else around me for so much support and probably a lot of tolerance.

I'm taking tomorrow morning off.

Home from Denver at last.

2010-11-06T18:20:00.001-05:00

After something like 17 hours of solo big truck driving, I made it home today. (Lily, next time I will take you up on your offer to go along!) I'm beyond exhausted, but it was an incredibly satisfying trip.

I picked up aluminum parts for a few more of the new Em2 boxes as I passed through St. Louis. Here my wonderful Kate helps unload.

Our next big task is to catch up on the Em2 waiting list and ship a bunch of models!

GSA Denver summary: We had a blast!

2010-11-05T18:33:00.001-05:00

We had a marvelous time at GSA--everybody worked so hard; thanks to my wife Kate, to Lily and Meriam, and also to Andrew Podoll, a treasured collaborator; here you see the entire crew.

I really enjoyed watching Lily work with kids who dropped by. She has so many talents, and is such a joy to work with.

I talked with dozens of scientists who appreciate our work. It's clear from my conversations that our combination of the Emriver Em4, close range photogrammetry (CRP), and the color coded media (summary video here) is groundbreaking.
Here's a fast video presentation of photos, including some time lapse with a fisheye lens. The model was constantly disturbed, so the forms you see aren't very pretty.

GSA Denver day one.

2010-10-31T22:20:00.000-05:00

A day I'll always remember. Kate, Lily, and I worked very hard this morning to get everything in its final place, and a year's worth of planning came to fruition.

We welcomed hundreds of delighted visitors from many countries tonight--here are a few images.

I'm happy to see the big Em4 model evoke such wonder and interest.

Driving the Em4 to Denver!

2010-10-29T18:57:00.001-05:00

Kate and I are just a few hours from Denver now. Today we passed Konza Prairie and the Flint Hills.

We shared driving this big truck with beautiful skies but a 20mph+ crosswind all day, pretty exhausting. (Here's Kate with our little travel companion, who usually lives in my truck, Ocho the octopus.)

But the big Em4 is snugly blocked in the back, and we couldn't be happier, tomorrow we set up in Denver and get ready to show it to the world!

And we regret not being able to hook up with Ron Schott in Hays, sorry Ron!

Off to GSA - Denver with a truck full of Em4 model!

2010-10-28T19:22:00.000-05:00

Kate and I picked up a beautiful new Emriver Em4 at Sauer Machine in St. Louis today and are driving it to GSA-Denver, where thousands of geoscientists will see it.

We've been planning and dreaming about this for a year, and are very excited. I'm so happy that my wife, wonderful companion, and best friend is along for this adventure.

And thanks to Warren Sauer and his colleagues for incredible machining, welding, design, and strong support of our work.

Our first Em2(x) model ships!

2010-10-25T19:00:00.000-05:00

After many months of research and design we shipped our first redesigned Emriver Em2 (which we call the Em2x at the lab).

We're in full production mode, all the kinks are out and we're building models. And have a lot of orders to fill (thanks!)

We're prepping for GSA-Denver in the middle of this, and driving a truck out with one of our big Em4s. We're all overworked, so it's hard to fully appreciate this milestone.

But seeing ideas that delight and educate people come to fruition like this is a wonderful thing.

Here you see me with Visna, world's coolest UPS guy, with the Em2's new box, just millimeters under the UPS size limits.

And Meriam expertly adding the handles to a reservoir (aha, a French word!). And Lily working to finish a close range photogrammetry movie we'll show at GSA.

Then me testing a flow controller and later very tired, waiting for Visna.

We'll be shipping more units as soon as we get back from GSA, If you're waiting for one, thanks for your patience, I promise it'll be worth it.

The new Emriver Em2s are in the house.

2010-10-22T20:25:00.000-05:00

Today I drove to L.E. Sauer Machine in St. Louis to pick up our first production run of twenty. Most of them are sold.

The boxes are beautiful, and weigh only 38 pounds (the old one was 65). Here Lily does an easy two-handed overhead lift. The other photo shows the supports.

We'll be showing these at GSA-Denver, and shipping orders as soon as we get back!

Stop writing "pencil for scale" captions!

2010-10-18T19:00:00.000-05:00

You'll write instead, "scale in cm" like a good scientist should, because we'll be giving these to our friends at GSA Denver.

Mechanical pencils and waterproof field books will be around for a long time. Here we have a pencil and centimeter photo scale combined.

Lily Hwang applied her photogrammetric/scientific/graphics skills to produce this. Not easy. Bob's Buick doesn't specify its freebie pencil logo length be accurate to 0.1mm.

Seems obvious, but I've never seen it done before, have you?

I'd love to laser engrave some nice Pentels or Staedlers. What do you think?

See you at GSA! (And here's a link any field note nerd will appreciate; a blog dedicated to mechanical pencils. )

Ice bedrock, knitting, and LRRD internationale.

2010-10-15T19:15:00.000-05:00

All our days are interesting, but today was extra special.

We sold our first Em2 model in Europe.

We tested ice structures in a model and it was a huge success. Here Lily adds dye to a chunk of ice.

We began full scale production of the new Emriver Em2.

And by far the most important, Lily showed us the official LRRD scarf she's knitting and will sport at GSA Denver.

John Cotter, a professor at SIUC-Aviation who builds and flies aircraft (and has shot video for us from his ultralight) was here today helping us with production. Thanks, John.

A strong first in experimental fluvial geomorphology.

2010-10-07T19:31:00.000-05:00

I'm happy to report we've made high quality 3D measurements of channel form in our Em4 model using close range photogrammetry (CRP) in Ana Londono's lab at the Dept. of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at St. Louis University.

Working with one of our Emriver Em4 geomodels, Ana's student Tim Keenan and our Lily Hwang have produced some amazing first results.

CRP software uses multiple photographs to build a model of a scene. The camera positions are calculated by the software and don't have to be measured. Unlike other forms of photogrammetry, relative camera positions don't have to be measured--the camera can be hand held as long as high quality images are taken.

Software builds a point cloud and calculates camera positions automatically. I won't mention the brand we used because we're hoping to find a company that will work with us--the software is not cheap (and rightly so).

Building high quality point clouds and surfaces-- accurate to <2mm in all dimensions -- is powerful stuff, but in our Em4 we can join that with color coded media to add information on surface particle size! The advance over current state of the art, manual measurement or laser scanning, is huge and obvious, and I'm pretty sure we have a strong first in experimental fluvial geomorphology.

The posibilities for research, teaching, and visualization make my head spin!

We'll be talking more about this as our project develops. Many thanks to our collaborators and to Andrew Podoll with SIUC geology who loaned camera equipment for the trial -- and Lily, she rocked, working two weekends in a row and overcoming many obstacles to get this done.

And we owe much to Neffra Matthews and her colleague Tom Noble with the BLM. Last year Neffra finished a fantastic publication on CRP that focues on its use at larger scales in field settings. And here's a short overview from she wrote. We'll have an Em4 at GSA Denver, and will be ready to talk about this work!

The new Em2 is in the house!

2010-10-02T17:26:00.001-05:00

Today Lily returned from St. Louis with a set of supports for the new Emriver Em2. Aside from a few minor details, after thousands of hours of work this new design is done.

Clearly Lily's very excited about this, and so am I!

The "horses" as we call them are beautiful; made from bent 1/8" aluminum, they weigh only 8 pounds (3.6 kg) each. The parts are laser-cut, complete with an aluminum-friendly "emriver" logo design by Lily.

Though the model is only slightly smaller than the old Em2, we've shaved about 35 pounds off the weight of the box and supports, and the model will use 30 pounds less plastic media.

And the whole thing will be UPS-shippable, which lowers cost and hassle, makes shipping overseas much easier, and enables us and other researchers/teachers to easily ship the model to conferences and workshops.

The old Em2 was based on 20 years of experience and had a very good design. We've now added several months of intense R&D work. It's so cool to see this realized in laser-cut aluminum. We hope to start shipping these to buyers with outstanding orders in the next two weeks. Thanks for your patience, it'll be worth it!

Lily and Meriam (who helped me in the lab yesterday with calibration of the electronic controller) are sporting the our new T-shirt --we got a batch on Friday.

Katt Muskuna, an out of town friend of Lily's is observing her surfing in the top photo.

Why I have no time for science blogging!

2010-09-27T19:25:00.000-05:00

We are insanely busy at LRRD these days, with consulting, R&D, preparation for GSA-Denver, starting new research, and shipping at least a dozen of our new Em2 models as they're built.

Here's a sampling of what's going on, just in the last couple of weeks, and an excuse for my lack of science blogging!

I actually took some time off last weekend for the first time in weeks. Lily didn't--she spent most of it at Saint Louis University, working with grad student Tim Keenan, testing and developing close range photogrammetry (CRP) methods for their Emriver Em4 model. Exciting stuff!

Lots of outreach lately--we're working with a Senior Engineering Design class at SIUC; they'll be looking at instrumentation methods for our models.

And we hosted an SIUC watershed science class; this was a blast;students ran long profiles in the model (which we plotted real time on the monitor you see) and, by accident, built some very effective grade control stuctures. A cool learning experience.

And Lily and Andrew Podoll with the NSF-funded GK-12 HEART program at SIUC took our model to a local environmental education program headlined by Jason the Farmer. Thanks to Lily and Andrew, who donated their time (no effort by me).

Lily also hauled an Em2 to the Middle Mississippi River Wetland Field Station open house last weekend. The MMRWFS is a 1,380 acre research area run by faculty at SIUC. Those big blue things are fish tanks.

Our happy first digital hydrograph!

2010-09-23T21:38:00.000-05:00

Today we completed hardware and software for an electronic flow controller for our redesigned Em2.

The little box you see here connects to the Em2's pump and controls flow in the model.

And it automatically runs hydrographs! Teachers and students can run standard hydrographs or program their own, and observe/measure results in the model.

The controller uses an open-source Arduino microcontroller. It's physically hackable--those screws on the front cover are for you to remove, and the cover is transparent for a reason. The software is open source and very accessible.

Via a USB port you can connect it to a laptop to receive data, control flow real time, or program the Arduino. You can control other devices, such as a camera taking time-lapse photos. There are many possibilities.

More later; here we celebrate our first digital hydrograph. And I've done a quick video description.

Lily's great geomodel T-shirt art.

2010-09-08T19:43:00.001-05:00

Our Ecohydrologist Lily Hwang, also an artist and Abobe Illustrator wrangler, has produced this charming T-shirt graphic.

It features her, Meriam Lahlou (our amazing multilingual business manager), and me in a loud shirt.

What do you think? Do you like it? Parlez-vous français? Will this sell river models?

Want one?

First five legit commenters are in luck! I need a mailing address and size, use info@emriver.com.

UPDATE: Lily, this is it! Was I the originator of the outside box? If so, my bad :-)

But the constraints of the green box forced us into some cool composition, didn't it? ("Geomodels"should be in lower case, one more tweak.)

Beautiful, Lily.

New flow controller for the Emriver Em2!

2010-09-05T19:55:00.005-05:00

Today we built the first street-ready model of the new Em2 flow controller.

Months in the making, this open source electronic tool will allow precise control and measurement of water flow in the Emriver Em2.

Out of the box it can control flow with up/down buttons, and can run typical hydrographs.

Teachers and students can call up, for example, a "five minute flashy urban hydrograph" and observe/measure the results.

How about a model river with real time hydrographs generated and displayed on a nearby monitor? You think students watching this will learn about hydrographs? Will they have fun? This controller has a USB connector for things like that.

The software will be completely open source, running on an Arduino Duemilanove. A USB port allows reprogramming and data exchange. Students will be able to connect a laptop and see hydrographs as they're run. Advanced students can write their own software for the controller.

One example: The controller could trigger a digital camera taking photos of the developing channel at different points in the hydrograph. Students could make a time lapse photo series tied to the hydrograph. The possibilities are unlimited, and all very affordable and accessible.

The controller doesn't use any expensive or exotic parts, is nearly waterproof, can survive drops to a concrete floor, and its use is super obvious because busy geoscience teachers don't have time to read manuals.

Many thanks to consultants Chris Krumm, Chris Alix, and members of the online Arduino Forum community (especially Stigern and Grumpy_Mike.)

Sagehen restoration workshop highlights.

2010-08-20T20:10:00.000-05:00

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I'm back from a stream restoration workshop at the Sagehen Creek Field Station in California. Lily was a student and TA, and we both taught using an Emriver model.

The Station's run by Jeff Brown; his wife Faerthen works there too. It's a magical research/teaching site with ~8,000 acres in the Sierra about 20 miles north of Tahoe. From the website:

The roughly 8,000 acre Sagehen Creek watershed includes yellow pine, mixed conifer, and red fir forests, brushfields, scattered mountain meadows and fens. Deep snow is typical of the winter season, and dry, warm weather is typical of the summer period. Sagehen Creek is about 8 miles long, extending eastward from near the crest of the Sierra to Stampede Reservoir on the Little Truckee River.

Matt Kondolf and Peter Wilcock talked about river management; Peter has been doing some cool management-oriented work on sediment transport. We also heard from local scientists and consultants, and Sarah Kupferberg (from Mary Power's lab at UC Berkeley) gave captivating talks on stream inverts and geomorphology.

We looked at the very intersting Pliestocene geomorph along the Truckee River through Reno--crazy stratigraphy left behind from ice dam breakups in Tahoe and Pyramid Lake. And a river that doesn't lend itself to simple management solutions.

And also river-driven water park in Reno. I was impressed. A lot of clever hydraulics, politics, financing, and people management made this inner city park something unique. Here you see Jim Litchfield of Fluid Concepts, the main designer/driving force behind this. He's made some very impressive Trompe-l'Oeil hydraulics--big, surfable standing waves designed so even little kids can safely play in them.

Here's Lily on the Truckee in Reno.

I met two incredible young students. Kristen Podolak , who's finishing her PhD (and working on waterparks like this one) was the workshop's workhorse. Ricardo Sousa, from Portugal (and fresh off the plane, still jet lagged), who's starting a doctorate at Berkeley. Here you see Kristen and Ricardo discussing drawings he made of the Reno site.

Emriver model outreach in Alaska.

2010-08-12T19:58:00.003-05:00

The Bureau of Land Management's Glen Allen, Alaska field office has been using our Em2 model for outreach. Here are a few photos.

The young man teaching is Luke Ringger, a high school student who has a gift for working with younger kids, who look up to him because he's not "old."

These made my very happy. Thanks to Marnie Graham, Matthew Vos, and others at BLM for capturing/sending them.

The last photo shows Tim Sundlov (hand on bucket), who arranged to buy the Em2, in my favorite setting for our models--next to a river, running on a small battery. As designed.

We're working hard in this economy to pursue our river model labor of love, and news like this keeps us going.

Lily Hwang graduates.

2010-08-06T18:09:00.000-05:00

Our Ecohydrologist C. Lily Hwang graduates from SIUC today. She earns an MS in Forestry, with honors (as usual.) Lily joined us back in May.

Speaking for the rest of LRRD, my wife Kate, and I'm sure a lot of other people: Lily, you're awesome.

Here she is yesterday, testing pumps and piping design for our new Em2.

Congratulations Lily! We're glad to work with you.

Geomorphically incorrect Art #4.

2010-08-03T20:38:00.002-05:00

Kids, not only is the art incorrect, but the advice is, too.

From an old issue of Boy's Life. Maybe those kids at top reduced the slope of eroding bank by hand, but I doubt it.

Willow cuttings only work if you first fix the underlying cause, which in this case is likely over grazing. Which, unlike more natural meander migration, would leave this outside bend bank with a moderate slope (and with a bunch of hoof prints and dung piles, not pictured, thus the incorrectness). A well built and maintained barbed wire fence would be the prerequisite here, but I don't see one.

And what bad advice we have next. Armoring a stream's banks with its bed material. The stream put those rocks there in the last big flood. It'll move them again, especially if, like Tony Hawk, they're poised at the top of a ramp, having been given some extra potential energy by well-meaning 1960's Boy Scouts.

Believe it or not, this method is widespread in America's gravel bed streams, at least where it's quasi legal or the law isn't enforced. The result is always the same, and in fact our last consulting work involved a survey of the aftermath of a project like this. Only that one was done with lots of Diesel fuel, not barefoot Boy Scouts.

To discourage this sort of thing we modeled the typical stream response in this video.

Disclaimer: I was a Boy Scout in the 1960's.

Normal noises at Little River Research.

2010-07-28T19:21:00.001-05:00

We've been busy at LRRD the past few weeks, planning consulting jobs (we're mapping the Cache River this fall), conference travel, and finalizing the complete redesign of our Em2 model.

It seems every day brings an important decision (Do we spent ~$10K, at least, to go to AGU in San Francisco this fall?), we're doing and planning so much with a staff of three, and communicating with hundreds of clients and colleagues.

These busy days flash by. Photos photos from the last two remind me how lucky I am to work here.

Top photo: Tugi Papau helps us redesign of our website. Very exciting; the new one will be WordPress-based, super editable and dynamic.

Adam, Meriam's son, eats his lunch today--he's been coming by on his summer off now and then. Meriam's kids are wonderful and we love to have them around.

Besides English, Lily speaks Thai, and Chinese; Meriam is fluent in Italian, French, and Arabic; and on the whiteboard you can see Arrete de me harceler!! "Stop hassling me!" (Meriam, I can't make Blogger show le petite chapeau, I know it's mispelled.)

My wife Kate with our 10 year old German shepherd, JaJa (named after this guy). JaJa is joining me at work as he recovers from knee surgery.

And here's the near-final version of the new Em2 digital pump controller. It'll run hydrographs, send data to a laptop via USB, record run time for experiments, and be hackable and programmable by students.

I've been working on this with three collaborators day and night for a few weeks now.

And last, Meriam and Adam seeing the controller, for the first time, past the prototype stage and in one piece, all contained in a box.

Thanks for the photos Lily!

Gravel roads, NSF, dumpster diving, IGERT students.

2010-07-23T20:04:00.001-05:00

A few photos from today's work.

Little River Research & Design is on a roll. Like the kind I remember
on gravel roads in Arkansas way back, mostly great fun but with seriously unpleasant jolts.

Bumps like a rejection from NSF last week. And very cool stuff (the
wind in your hair and pine trees whipping by) like nearing the end of a six-month project to completely redesign the Emriver Em2.

Orders for the new models, from the coolest organizations, are piling up.

Today I gave a talk to SIUC's IGERT grad students.
After a week of working with three collaborators on electronics and software for a new Em2 pump controller, I was mentally fried.

I apologized to the students for this, started my talk, and then a chair leg broke and I landed on the floor. Lily laughed hard.

A couple of days ago she contributed a bump in the gravel road by leaving a valve open and flooding the lab.

Good thing she laughed, the students didn't know what to do.

The chair leg failure was oddly like our NSF rejection, a superficially embarrassing event having little to do with our accomplishments and capabilities.

Not a bit embarrased. Get up, be patient and keep doing good things.

My wife Kate and Lily insisted on a reenactment of the fall, so here you go. The chair is a beautiful 1960's laminated wood thing I dumpster dived and repaired. My favorite chair ever.

Fixable with patience and skill.

Geomorphically Incorrect Art #3

2010-07-22T12:43:00.000-05:00

A couple of nice "what the future will look like" paintings from this cool little blog. No artist mentioned, but it is signed.

Clearly this one is geomorphically incorrect; it's a built channel. But there are some serious problems with hydraulics and, unless the channel is depicted during a flood event, capacity to pass large flows.

I love the plantings on top of the spillway. Has the Army Corps ever done that?

What design problems do you see?

For a real life giant concrete channel, check out the South Fork of the Zumbro in Rochester, Minnesota. Sedimentation problems, anybody?