CAREER: Sedimentary signatures of large riverine floods to constrain risk and build resiliency

Rivers represent critical economic corridors and refuges for biodiversity, but infrastructure and ecosystems in floodplains remain vulnerable to flooding and erosion. This project will improve flood hazard assessments for lowland rivers by understanding and harnessing fluvial dynamics, thus improving the safety and sustainability of river management science.

A research plan focusing on observing and simulating floodplain sedimentation to improve flood hazard assessments is coupled with an education and outreach plan that broadens participation in geomorphology and redefines rivers as dynamic features that provide beneficial services to people and ecosystems. The research tests hypotheses describing controls on fluvial sedimentation that are critical for predicting and managing the accumulation of pollutants and sediments for floodplain management and restoration.

A diverse geoscience workforce and public engagement are critical for the long-term move towards equitable and sustainable river management, and this project is expressly designed to broaden participation in Earth sciences through immersive research experiences for community college students and to elevate public awareness of fluvial dynamics through K-12 initiatives.

The traditional paradigm in lowland river and floodplain management relies almost exclusively on systematic stream gage data as the key dataset informing flood hazard assessments, while largely neglecting the geomorphic dynamics and resulting sedimentary records preserved in floodplains. This project builds on the PI’s prior work in the development and application of alluvial stratigraphic records by harnessing recent advances in hydraulic modeling to constrain flood hazard assessments via robust paleoflood estimates.

The research objectives are to (1) establish a long-term observatory to monitor floodplain sedimentation, (2) develop hydraulic model simulations on modern and theoretical floodplain geometries, and (3) integrate models and observations of sedimentation to link streamflow to sedimentation patterns in a dynamic alluvial setting. The research plan leverages state-of-the-art hydraulic modeling with an observational network of environmental sensors and sediment cores to test a series of hypotheses describing the landscape controls on alluvial sedimentation patterns, and then it applies the findings to constrain flood hazard assessments through high precision paleoflood estimates.

This research is integrated with an education and outreach plan designed to (1) attract, motivate, and train community college students in geoscience research through an established internship program, and (2) develop a platform for raising public awareness of dynamic fluvial processes through K-12 initiatives.

This award is co-funded by the Geomorphology & Land-use Dynamics and Hydrologic Sciences programs.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.