Brian P. Bledsoe, Ph.D., P.E.
Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering
Engineering
Research Center
Colorado
State University
Fort
Collins, CO 80523
Telephone:
(970) 491-8410
FAX:
(970) 491-8671
email: brian.bledsoe@colostate.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Research Interests
CIVE 413
Environmental River Mechanics
CIVE 440 Nonpoint Source Pollution
Hydraulic Engineering / Stream Restoration and River Mechanics
GeoTools Software
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Ecological Engineering and Aquatic Ecosystem Restoration
Graduate
Degree Program in Ecology
About Fort Collins, CO
My research interests are focused on the interface between environmental engineering, fluvial geomorphology, and aquatic ecology with particular emphasis on stream and watershed processes. Past and current research topics include:
- Influence of human activities on
the structure, function, and health of streams and watersheds
- Understanding and predicting the
impacts of land use changes on water quality, stream physical processes,
and biotic communities
- Fate and transport of sediment
and diffuse pollution in mixed land use watersheds
- Riparian zone processes including
vegetation / wood effects on nutrient dynamics, channel morphology and
network hydrology
- Restoration and construction of
wetlands and riparian zones
- Development of stream, river, and
watershed restoration practices that are effective and ecologically-based
- Hierarchical physical
classification of streams for improved biomonitoring and water quality
management
- Examining the relative
sensitivity of various stream types to watershed modifications
- Landscape perspectives for
drainage networks and stream ecosystems
- Entropy and energy dissipation in
channels and networks
- Innovative stormwater management practices
and site design techniques to mitigate the effects of urbanization on
channel network stability and ecological integrity
- Sustainable river management and
engineering based on the principles of ecological engineering and fluvial
geomorphology
- Quantifying flow regimes that
achieve ecological goals in the context of economic constraints
Ecological
Engineering in Stream and Watershed Restoration
Historically, the management of rivers and watersheds has been plagued with oversimplified but expensive solutions to complex problems. Ecological engineering provides an increasingly attractive alternative to traditional engineering approaches to environmental problems that are often much more expensive to construct and sustain. The increasing interest in watershed restoration reflects a growing awareness that all of the goods, services, and values that society derives from the land and water ultimately depend on healthy, properly functioning watersheds. We are attempting to integrate aspects of water resources engineering, aquatic ecology, environmental sciences, fluvial geomorphology, systems theory, risk assessment, and other disciplines to understand and reverse the widespread decline of aquatic ecosystems. This includes reestablishing the structure and function of aquatic ecosystems, including their natural diversity through unified application of engineering and ecological principles.
Ecological engineering has been defined as "the design of sustainable systems consistent with ecological principles that integrates human society with its natural environment for the benefit of both." Ecological engineering seeks to design and manifest closed-loop processes in order to eliminate waste, prevent pollution and restore polluted land and water, and provide goods and services just as nature does. Traditional engineering tends to replace existing natural processes with new structure and process, but ecological engineering provides approaches that capitalize on the elegant designs and processes of nature to develop systems that a have high economic and environmental performance over the long term. The result is efficient, economical, self-organizing, and adaptive systems that make good sense. The field is increasing in breadth and depth as engineers and scientists address the complex questions of environmental quality and resource allocation facing humanity in the 21st century.