SUSE 6
29 May – 1 June 2023
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
-On the unceded lands of the Turrbal and Yagara people-
Keynote Speakers
We had several exciting keynote speakers who shared their work, ideas and perspectives with SUSE6 attendees. We are proud to have secured a diverse range of people from research, industry and government at varying stages of their careers to present throughout the four day program.
Speakers included:
Speakers included:
- Dr. Brian Bledsoe | University of Georgia
- Dr. Christopher Walsh | The University of Melbourne
- Brianna Williams | U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
- Reph Lankri & Mark Gardiner | Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation
- Timothy Fichera & Dwayne Honor | Bundaberg Regional Council
- Theresa Bower | Burrundi Design Studio & The University of Queensland
Dr. Brian Bledsoe | University of Georgia
Brian Bledsoe is Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor in Resilient Infrastructure, and founding director of the Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems in the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia. Brian holds degrees from Georgia Tech, North Carolina State University, and Colorado State University (Ph.D. Civil Engineering – Hydraulics) and has over 30 years of experience as a civil and environmental engineer, hydrologist, and environmental scientist in the private and public sectors. Before entering the professorate, he worked as a consulting engineer and surveyor, and for the State of North Carolina as a watershed restoration engineer and coordinator of the state’s nonpoint source program. Brian was promoted to full professor with tenure in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Colorado State University prior to moving back home to Georgia in 2016. Brian’s research is focused on infrastructure systems, stormwater and flood management, water quality, fluvial geomorphology, river engineering, and ecosystem restoration. He received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2006, served as a Fulbright Scholar in Chile in 2008, was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2017, and is past president of the American Ecological Engineering Society.
Fundamental understanding of urban stream physical and ecological processes, as well as practical understanding of essential management interventions for protecting and revitalizing urban streams have advanced significantly over the last half century. Many of these advances have emerged from catchment-level analyses and stormwater management studies focused on characterizing and mitigating the profound effects of hydrologic alteration. Stream-level studies focused on geomorphic processes and channel responses to urbanization have also yielded significant insights that are directly applicable to stream restoration. Studies and management interventions at the intermediate scale of urban riverscapes or floodplain networks are less prevalent, but present important opportunities to unite catchment- and channel-centric perspectives, as well as to spur innovative strategies that simultaneously bolster climate resilience, ecological integrity, and numerous co-benefits. This presentation will explore novel opportunities to integrate multi-scale stream improvement strategies in the context of generational investments in climate resilient infrastructure, and specifically how investments in urban floodplain networks as natural infrastructure can address inequities in flood exposure while also enhancing water quality, biodiversity, and numerous social benefits.
Find out more about Brian here: http://bledsoe.engr.uga.edu/
Dr Christopher Walsh | The University of Melbourne
Chris Walsh is an Associate Professor and Principle Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He has been studying the ecology of stream ecosystems in urban environments for nearly 30 years. Starting with the question of how urban land and water practice degrades stream ecosystems, he has worked with managers of urban drainage and rivers to trial practices and policies that might prevent and reverse that degradation.
Beginning in the Urban Program of the Cooperative Research Centre for Freshwater Ecology in 1994, Chris has always worked in close partnership with stream managers, mostly at Melbourne Water. Since 2013, Chris has been a primary member of the Melbourne Waterway Research-Practice Partnership, a program that has successfully married stream ecosystem research with stream and drainage management. The partnership has been instrumental in shaping water management and stream protection policies, and changing and prioritising management practice in Victoria.
He convened the first Symposium on Urbanization and Stream Ecology in 2003 in Melbourne Australia, and was a member of the SUSE board until the 5th SUSE in 2020. He will take the opportunity of a keynote address at SUSE 6 to review the most important findings of 30 years of urban stream research (and 20 of SUSE!), and share the secrets, the trials, the triumphs, the successes and the failures of a long partnership between stream research and management.
Find out more about Chris here: findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/188206-chris-walsh
Brianna Williams | U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Brianna Williams is a geographer with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) New Jersey Water Science Center in the Surface Water Investigations Program, working from her home in Tucson, Arizona. She holds a Masters in Geography with a specialty in coastal geomorphology from Texas A&M University. Brianna has worked with the USGS for twelve years working on a wide array of projects such as assessing the impacts of green stormwater infrastructure practices, endocrine disrupting compounds in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, aquifer contamination nationwide, and Harmful Algal Blooms offshore and in lakes and streams.
Brianna will present research evaluating changes in stream health during and after the conversion of an agricultural landscape to suburban development with a high density of stormwater management practices in Clarksburg, Maryland, USA. Developers were required to minimize impervious cover, protect riparian areas, and install enhanced stormwater control practices to treat stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces. For the last 20 years, streamflow, water quality, geomorphology, and benthic communities were monitored in five small watersheds providing a rare example of data spanning before, during, and after suburban development with a distributed stormwater control.
Find out more about Brianna here: https://www.usgs.gov/staff-profiles/brianna-williams
Brianna will present research evaluating changes in stream health during and after the conversion of an agricultural landscape to suburban development with a high density of stormwater management practices in Clarksburg, Maryland, USA. Developers were required to minimize impervious cover, protect riparian areas, and install enhanced stormwater control practices to treat stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces. For the last 20 years, streamflow, water quality, geomorphology, and benthic communities were monitored in five small watersheds providing a rare example of data spanning before, during, and after suburban development with a distributed stormwater control.
Find out more about Brianna here: https://www.usgs.gov/staff-profiles/brianna-williams
Reph Lankri & Mark Gardiner | Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage
Aboriginal Corporation
The Narrap Unit caring for Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country
Mark Gardiner and Reph Lankri work with the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation Narrap Unit guiding and delivering natural resource management activities on Country.
The Narrap Unit is founded on the knowledge that Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people are rights holders for Country and that all of Country is valued and important regardless of current land use and tenure. Underpinned by environmental, cultural, and social objectives, the team is commitment to restoring and managing the health of Country.
Through our Ranger Program, the Unit’s goal is to heal, conserve and manage Country, whilst providing Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and other Aboriginal people culturally meaningful work that supports professional development. The Rangers works across all of Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country, including urban areas, forested mountains, grasslands, rivers, creeks, billabongs and wetlands. The Unit also provides technical advice, and supports Elders and community engagement on numerous policies and strategies across local Council, statutory authorities, and the State Government. We seek to safeguard the knowledge and rights of Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people when dealing with external stakeholders, ensuring that culture and knowledge is respected.
To Mark Gardiner, Healing Country ‘calls on all of us to continue to seek greater protections for our lands, our waters, our sacred sites and our cultural heritage from exploitation, desecration, and destruction. Heal Country also means finally resolving many of the outstanding injustices which impact on the lives of our people’
Mark and Reph will discuss how the Narrap Unit care for Country in an urban environment.
Find out more about Reph, Mark and the Narrap Unit's work here: https://www.wurundjeri.com.au/
Timothy Fichera & Dwayne Honor | Bundaberg Regional Council
Tim Fichera is Bundaberg Regional Council’s Senior Engineer Program Management (Stormwater Drainage) and has close to 20 years’ experience working in civil engineering planning and design in both private and public sectors. Tim is a Chartered RPEQ and is passionate about sustainable engineering practices that seek to provide a better future for our children. With the support and assistance of Management, Tim is leading Council’s shift towards nature-based infrastructure solutions.
Dwayne Honor is the Branch Manager of Engineering Services with Bundaberg Regional Council representing the Asset Owner and Operator of Road, Drainage and Footpath infrastructure. Educated at Central Queensland University in Rockhampton he oversaw delivery of multiple flood studies and flood risk management studies in the Bundaberg Region including the Burnett and Kolan Rivers. He has previously served as Queensland Director of Floodplain Management Australia, Central Queensland committee for IPWEAQ and state board member of IPWEAQ. Dwayne is a 2015 Churchill Fellow from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, studying community resilience to extreme storm surges in the USA and Philippines.
Tim and Dwayne will present on the generational shift occurring in waterway management in the Bundaberg region, Australia. Since the mid to late 20th century, a majority of the Bundaberg city’s major creeks and waterways have been ‘upgraded’ from a natural creek to a concrete channel in efforts to maximise conveyance and developable land, all at the expense of ecological functions. Through the development of the Bundaberg Regional Council Stormwater Management Strategy (the Strategy), Council identified the need to change the management of creeks and waterways in the Bundaberg region, whilst supporting sustainable growth and deliver on Council’s vision to “build Australia’s best regional community”.
Since the completion of the Strategy, Council has completed and is currently planning for several waterway and creek rehabilitation projects, including the Saltwater Creek Master Plan and the Washpool Creek Master Plan. These plans proactively seek healthy waterways that deliver increased social and environmental benefits, flood risk reduction, and improved sustainability and resilience. Council has also completed the Belle Eden Park Waterway Naturalisation Project; a proactive co-design project that delivers an integrated public open space which balances its technical stormwater and drainage functions, whilst also delivering significant water quality, social, ecological, and environmental benefits. Council has been undertaking a variety of project monitoring including monthly water quality sampling, and shown significant improvements to water quality, and several other social and ecological indicators. Council is now using these findings to inform forward planning and continuous improvement for the management of waterways within the Bundaberg region.
Find out more about Tim here and Dwayne here.
Tim Fichera is Bundaberg Regional Council’s Senior Engineer Program Management (Stormwater Drainage) and has close to 20 years’ experience working in civil engineering planning and design in both private and public sectors. Tim is a Chartered RPEQ and is passionate about sustainable engineering practices that seek to provide a better future for our children. With the support and assistance of Management, Tim is leading Council’s shift towards nature-based infrastructure solutions.
Dwayne Honor is the Branch Manager of Engineering Services with Bundaberg Regional Council representing the Asset Owner and Operator of Road, Drainage and Footpath infrastructure. Educated at Central Queensland University in Rockhampton he oversaw delivery of multiple flood studies and flood risk management studies in the Bundaberg Region including the Burnett and Kolan Rivers. He has previously served as Queensland Director of Floodplain Management Australia, Central Queensland committee for IPWEAQ and state board member of IPWEAQ. Dwayne is a 2015 Churchill Fellow from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, studying community resilience to extreme storm surges in the USA and Philippines.
Tim and Dwayne will present on the generational shift occurring in waterway management in the Bundaberg region, Australia. Since the mid to late 20th century, a majority of the Bundaberg city’s major creeks and waterways have been ‘upgraded’ from a natural creek to a concrete channel in efforts to maximise conveyance and developable land, all at the expense of ecological functions. Through the development of the Bundaberg Regional Council Stormwater Management Strategy (the Strategy), Council identified the need to change the management of creeks and waterways in the Bundaberg region, whilst supporting sustainable growth and deliver on Council’s vision to “build Australia’s best regional community”.
Since the completion of the Strategy, Council has completed and is currently planning for several waterway and creek rehabilitation projects, including the Saltwater Creek Master Plan and the Washpool Creek Master Plan. These plans proactively seek healthy waterways that deliver increased social and environmental benefits, flood risk reduction, and improved sustainability and resilience. Council has also completed the Belle Eden Park Waterway Naturalisation Project; a proactive co-design project that delivers an integrated public open space which balances its technical stormwater and drainage functions, whilst also delivering significant water quality, social, ecological, and environmental benefits. Council has been undertaking a variety of project monitoring including monthly water quality sampling, and shown significant improvements to water quality, and several other social and ecological indicators. Council is now using these findings to inform forward planning and continuous improvement for the management of waterways within the Bundaberg region.
Find out more about Tim here and Dwayne here.
Theresa Bower | Burrundi Design Studio & The University of Queensland
Theresa Bower is a Wiradjuri women, designer, maker, artist, researcher and founder of Burrundi Design Studio. Theresa is currently studying a Masters of Philosophy at the University of Queensland on Embedding culture into the built environment. She is a co-author of Campuses on Countries: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Design Framework at the University of Queensland and has an in-depth knowledge of First Nations' Country-centred design which views to peel back the layers of “colonial veneer” in Australia’s urban landscapes.
First Nations culture revolves around a physical relationship with Country; meaning the care and health of Country is central to all activities. Theresa will discuss indigenous design principles and the concept of designing with Country; the process of engaging with First Nations people and traditional owners of Country, to ensure these vital voices are coming through in the design.
Theresa will discuss how designing with Country incorporates environmental sustainability, climate resilience, water sensitive urban design, and the use of materials that take site into context and use that to develop designs that provide an extra layer of place.
Find out more about Theresa here.
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