Courses

Part 1

The course emphasizes the inter-relatedness of hydrology, hydraulics, sediment transport, geomorphology, aquatic ecology, fisheries, and riparian ecology.  The course involves formal lectures, computer-based exercises, and field exercises.  Part 1 instructors strive to integrate the practice of stream management and restoration with modern riverine science and focuses on providing students an overview of recent trends and findings in the scientific literature. The course includes daily field activities in natural and rebuilt channels. We take advantage of historical monitoring data describing riverine processes of degraded and wild streams and project performance and biological processes and trends at restored sites.

Part 2

The focus of Part 2 is on hydraulics, sediment transport, and channel design. The 5 days are spent in lecture and computer exercises in flow modeling and their application to channel design.  Students are introduced to one-dimensional and multi-dimensional flow modeling and sediment transport considerations in channel design.  The course includes advanced lectures in sediment transport and geomorphology, and several computational spreadsheets are presented and applied to channel design problems.  We evaluate the circumstances where a channel design should be based on threshold channel assumptions and where sediment mass conservation must also be considered. Students work on design problems during this class.

 

Course Outline

The following links provide the detailed course schedules for the 2009 course. 

Download 2009 Course Schedule, Part 2 (pdf, requires Adobe Reader)

Comments from Past Courses

Review the comments of past participants of the Short Course.

 

What to Bring With You to the Course

Bring hats, water bottles, shoes, shorts, and waders if you have them for the field. We also have some waders available, and most of the streams we will be looking at are wadable with tennis shoes and shorts.  The courses are conducted during the heart of summer in the Rocky Mountains when day-time temperatures are warm to hot, afternoon thunderstorms occur occasionally, and the evenings are wonderfully cool!

Bring your laptops.  We will be working with software and programs that will be more meaningful to you if you can load them on your own computer and work with them in your own computer environment. If you don't have a laptop, we have desktop computers for your use.