Jonathan Czuba
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Earth & Environmental Science
When too much sand and silt settles into gravel streambeds, it fills the spaces between stones, a condition called embeddedness. This degrades habitat for aquatic life.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Engineering
- Topics
fine sediment
gravel embeddedness
streambed
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2027
What they work on
- Test whether fine sediment accumulation in streambeds can be predicted from bankfull flow conditions across a wide range of U.S. landscapes, by analyzing a U.S. EPA stream dataset.
- Measure how fine sediment accumulation in gravel streambeds varies over time, using repeated field measurements.
- Quantify in laboratory experiments how sand moving along the bed versus suspended in the flow becomes locked into gravel as bed movement stops, under different grain sizes and sediment supplies.
More about the research
Today the only way to know how much fine sediment a streambed holds is to go out and measure it. The team's preliminary results suggest a simpler answer: the flow that fills a stream to the top of its banks largely sets the amount of fine sediment, regardless of how much sediment is supplied. If so, fine sediment could be predicted across whole river networks from widely available stream data.
Why it matters
Predicting fine sediment in streambeds from widely available flow data, instead of costly site-by-site field surveys, could help agencies and river managers assess and protect stream habitat across entire basins. This could improve how aquatic ecosystems are monitored and managed in degraded gravel-bed rivers.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Enrica Viparelli
University of South Carolina-Columbia, SC·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure how sedimentation rates and grain sizes vary across the Congaree National Park floodplain after the Hurricane Helene flood, using field sediment sampling.
Katharine Huntington
University of Washington, WA·Earth & Environmental Science
Determine the source, depositional age and grain-size distribution of megaflood deposits along the Yarlung-Siang-Brahmaputra river system in the eastern Himalaya, using field observations and laboratory analytical tools.
Kory Konsoer
Louisiana State University, LA·Earth & Environmental Science
Test whether the initial junction angle of a river meander cutoff controls how fast sediment plugs its entrance and whether an oxbow lake forms, using recent cutoffs on the West Fork White River, Indiana.
The school
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University: 35 labs on PI Pages, $657M a year on research, 496 research doctorates a year.
More about Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.