In 2005, the Transportation Research Board received a “problem statement” from its member Highway Department DOTs: “Are there any alternatives to the traditional bank and channel protection measures, such as rip rap, gabions, cable-tied blocks, or grout-filled bags, that offer beneficial ‘in-stream functions’, such as habitat diversity, fish passage, water quality, and aquatic habitat?”
A three-year research project was awarded to Salix Applied Earthcare to develop a list of environmentally-sensitive methods, such as bioengineering, root wads, large woody debris, bendway weirs, and engineered riffles, intended to protect highway facilities from erosion, incision, and lateral migration.
This course is presented by the research principal investigator John McCullah — a CPESC, fluvio-geomorphologist, and bioengineering practitioner — who also, as a licensed contractor, has been building and monitoring dozens stream projects that utilize NCHRP Report 544 as “the basis of design”.