Hello everyone!

The next Colorado Geomorphology Organization (CoGO) meeting is this coming Wednesday, January 27, 2016 in FORT COLLINS. We will be meeting at 7pm on the campus of Colorado State University (Warner College of Natural Resources, Room #320). 

Dr. Ellen Wohl, Geosciences professor at Colorado State University and renowned author, will be giving a talk based on her recent publication "The Science and Practice of River Restoration."  (abstract below)

We will be meeting prior to the talk for dinner/drinks at Mayor of Old Town (632 S Mason St.) at 5:30pm, everyone is welcome! We will walk from the restaurant to the Natural Resources Building on CSU campus for the talk at 7pm. If you plan on meeting us for dinner, please reply via email to coloradogeomorph@gmail.com

Hope to see you there!

Best regards,

The CoGO Planning Committee

Wohl, E., S. N. Lane, and A. C. Wilcox (2015), The science and practice of river restoration, Water Resour. Res., 51, 5974–5997, doi:10.1002/2014WR016874.

ABSTRACT:

River restoration is one of the most prominent areas of applied water-resources science. From an initial focus on enhancing fish habitat or river appearance, primarily through structural modification of channel form, restoration has expanded to incorporate a wide variety of management activities designed to enhance river process and form. Restoration is conducted on headwater streams, large lowland rivers, and entire river networks in urban, agricultural, and less intensively human-altered environments. We critically examine how contemporary practitioners approach river restoration and challenges for implementing restoration, which include clearly identified objectives, holistic understanding of rivers as ecosystems, and the role of restoration as a social process. We also examine challenges for scientific understanding in river restoration. These include: how physical complexity supports biogeochemical function, stream metabolism, and stream ecosystem productivity; characterizing response curves of different river components; understanding sediment dynamics; and increasing appreciation of the importance of incorporating climate change considerations and resiliency into restoration planning. Finally, we examine changes in river restoration within the past decade, such as increasing use of stream mitigation banking; development of new tools and technologies; different types of process-based restoration; growing recognition of the importance of biological-physical feedbacks in rivers; increasing expectations of water quality improvements from restoration; and more effective communication between practitioners and river scientists.

Next Meeting January 27th, 2016

We are excited to announce that Dr. Ellen Wohl will be speaking at our next CoGO meeting on Wednesday, January 27th at 7pm on the campus of Colorado State University (Fort Collins).  We will send out details when the date gets closer, but we just wanted to get it on your calendars!

CSU Online Course in Design of Fish and Wildlife Studies

The Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology (FWCB) at Colorado State University will be offering  the online graduate course FW551, “Design of Fish and Wildlife Studies”.  This is an online graduate course designed for natural resource and FWCB career professionals and students who are looking to enhance their research design understanding and skills.

Instructor: Dr. Luke George, Dept. of FWCB

Registration Information: http://www.online.colostate.edu/courses/FW/FW551.dot

Exciting Talk from Central Rockies Chapter of the Society of Ecological Restoration Coming in January, 2014:

Please Save the Date!!!

 

The Central Rockies Chapter of the Society of Ecological Restoration Presents the Free Pub Talk:

 

Ecology and Hydrology of Fires and Floods: Applied Science in a Changing Landscape

 

Presented by Steven Yochum and Jonas Feinstein of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service

 

At New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, CO

500 Linden Street, Fort Collins, CO 80524

 

January 30, 2014

 

7 - 9:30 p.m.

 

Food, Beer & Ecological Restoration

2013-2014 Schedule

The 2013-2014 schedule is currently under development, stay tuned for more information soon

Field Trip Led by Dave Rosgen May 4th

The 2013 Colorado Geomorphology Organization field trip is planned for Saturday, May 4th (10am to 1pm). Dave Rosgen will lead a field trip of his stream restoration efforts in the Hayman Burn area (Trail Creek and West Creek).

If you are interested in attending, please RSVP to coloradogeomorph @ gmail.com

Next meeting Wednesday March 6th in DENVER

The next Colorado Geomorphology Organization (CoGO) meeting is this coming Wednesday, March 6, 2013 in Denver. We will be meeting at 7:00 pm on the campus of the University of Colorado at Denver (Room #3617 in the North Classroom Building - see attached map for building and parking lot locations).

Dr. Lee MacDonald will be the speaker for the evening. Dr. Lee MacDonald is a recently retired (“reallocated”) professor of Watershed Science at Colorado State University and a Senior Research Scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Lab. His specialty is the effects of land use change on runoff and erosion, particularly in forested areas. For the past decade he has focused primarily on runoff and erosion from fires and roads, and his retirement has been seriously hindered as a result of new research on the 2012 High Park fire and salvage logging in northern California. Most of his publications and student theses are available from his web site: http://warnercnr.colostate.edu/~leemac/. He will be giving a talk titled: Effects of Wildfires on Soils, Runoff and Erosion: Causes, Rehabilitation, and Geomorphic Change.

Abstract:

Large wildfires are becoming increasingly common, and are projected to further increase with climate change. High-severity fires are of greatest concern because of the dramatic shift from subsurface stormflow to Horton overland flow. This basic change can increase the size of peak flows and hillslope erosion rates by up to several orders of magnitude compared to unburned conditions. The resulting effects on downstream channels, flooding, water quality, aquatic habitat, and reservoir sedimentation are of great concern to land managers, the public, and water providers. In this seminar I will summarize over a decade of work on fires, particularly in the Colorado Front Range. The specific objectives are to: 1) identify the key causes of the observed change in infiltration and increase in water-driven surface erosion; 2) discuss how the rate of recovery can vary with site conditions; 3) use this understanding to explain the observed variations in the effectiveness of different post-fire rehabilitation techniques; 4) discuss the role of high-severity fires as a major driver of landscape evolution, and how the rate and type of change can vary with elevation zone, flow regime, and watershed location. The seminar will conclude with a discussion of critical research needs at both extremes: the effects of fires at the pore scale, and the need to scale up our shorter-term, hillslope results in both time and space. Some of these needs will be illustrated by the contrasting results from the 2002 Hayman fire and the 2012 High Park fire (see pictures below).

We will be meeting prior to the talk for dinner at Fresh Craft (1530 Blake St, Suite A) in Denver at 5:30 pm. We will walk from the restaurant to the North Classroom building at UCD for the talk at 7pm. If you plan on coming for dinner, please let us know so we can make reservations.