Presidential Young Investigator Award: Coastal Processes in Large Rivers

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This award provides support for Dr. Bernard Bauer through the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Program. The objective of this program is to provide research support for some of the nation's most outstanding and promising young science and engineering faculty members. The awards are intended to improve the capability of U.S. academic institutions to respond to the demand for highly qualified scientists and engineers for academic and industrial research and teaching. This award will allow Dr. Bauer to continue his research in geomorphic processes, especially the mechanisms by which fluids sculpt landforms. The investigator has been a leader in adapting models and analytic techniques originally developed in coastal studies for use in analyses of streams. He will continue this synthetic research through detailed explorations of the influence of wave-like fluid oscillations within streams on stream banks, expanding on the unidirectional flow models that currently form the basis for most models of channel morphology. This research will include a series of experimental and empirical analyses that focus on application to stream-channel erosion and deposition of beach-equilibrium models, which include measurements of wave height, steepness, skewness, and orbital velocity. Time-series analyses of data gathered by electromagnetic current meters and submersible pressure sensors will provide more accurate estimates of the relative significance of oscillatory motions and unidirectional flows on stream-channel erosion and deposition. In addition to enhancing general understandings of fluid dynamics and channel morphology, this research will provide practical information for analyses of the differential impacts of alternate discharge regimes when stream flow is regulated by dams or other flow-control structures.