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RSM River Mechanics PodcastAuthor: Stanford Gibson
Conversations about River Mechanics, Sediment Transport, and Fluvial Geomorphology Language: en-us Genres: Earth Sciences, Natural Sciences, Science Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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Gary Parker on Gravel Bed Rivers
Episode 9
Friday, 17 July, 2026
Dr. Gary Parker is one of the defining figures in modern river mechanics and sediment transport. He's a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois or Urbana Champlain where he's been since 2005. Before that he was a distinguished professor at the University of Minnesota. He's a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and has won more scientific awards than I can count - in multiple disciplines - that could each be thought of as a career-defining honor. You do not have to dig very deep into many of the topics we talk about in this podcast before you encounter his work. His early research on channel form, meander mechanics, and dynamic armoring may each represent Kuhnian paradigm shifts in those sub-disciplines. But part of the evidence of his influence is that I don't think there's another name that has come up more often in these conversations as I've talked to subject matter experts about how they understand rivers. When I first got interested in sediment transport I found Dr. Parker’s Morphodynamics website:Before Universitas started making their materials publicly available (shoot, before there was much on the internet) Dr. Parker put the notes and code from his Morphodynamics class up on a website. I spent hours pouring over them. Then years before the ASC 110 manual of practice was published, he posted his chapter on gravel bed rivers on that same website, which may be the single most influential document in my career. Christopher Lee, who played Saruman in the Lord of the Rings films, used to talk about how much he wanted to be in those films because he read the books through every year. That was me with Dr. Parker's chapter for at least a decade. I sat down and read that chapter every year to try to contextualize the new mysteries I'd encountered in these systems since the last time I picked it up. Later, as I started my graduate work, it became clear that you simply could not get up to speed on modern Morphodynamics and sediment transport without doing business with Gary's literature.Dr Parker also has an unusual facility to translate complex river mechanics principles into fun, vivid, metaphor…and if you have followed my teaching at all, you might suspect that this is one of my favorite flavors of science communication.So, I am obviously delighted to wrap up this season of the RSM River Mechanics podcast talking gravel bed rivers with Dr. Gary Parker.This series was funded by the Regional Sediment Management (RSM) program.Mike Loretto edited the first three seasons and created the theme music.Tessa Hall is editing most of Season 4.Stanford Gibson (HEC Sediment Specialist) hosts.Video shorts and other bonus content are available at the podcast website:https://www.hec.usace.army.mil/confluence/rasdocs/rastraining/latest/the-rsm-river-mechanics-podcast...but most of the supplementary videos are available on the HEC Sediment YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/user/stanfordgibsonIf you have guest recommendations or feedback you can reach out to me on LinkedIn or ResearchGate or fill out this recommendation and feedback form: https://forms.gle/wWJLVSEYe7S8Cd248
