High Energy Roundtable with the EWN Practice Leads

Welcome to Episode 2 of Season 4! EWN Practice Leads play a critical role in broadening and expanding the application of Engineering With Nature practices and nature-based solutions. Host Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, Deputy Lead of the Engineering With Nature Program at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), are joined by a roundtable of EWN Practice Leads who are all with USACE. Elizabeth Godsey is the Technical Lead for Coastal Engineering and Regional Sediment Management with Mobile District; Danielle Szimanski is a Project Manager and Ecologist with Baltimore District; Edward Brauer is a Senior Hydraulic Engineer with St. Louis District; and David Crane is an Environmental Resource Specialist with Omaha District.   Consistent with this season’s theme—Up, Up, Up, with Engineering With Nature—EWN Practice Leads were established to enable the continued expansion of EWN. According to Jeff, “Back in March of 2021, we were experiencing a lot of growth within the EWN Program, and we realized that for this growth to continue, we really needed to reach beyond this national-level program and get out into the field more. We strived to identify individuals who would help us grow the program so, we put out a call internal to the Corps. Eddie, Elizabeth, Danielle, and Dave stepped up and answered the call. It’s been really exciting working with all four of them.”   The Leads had various levels of experience with EWN, but all were motivated by an opportunity to help expand the application of EWN principles and practices throughout the Corps by acting as the connection between the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), and the districts. Elizabeth called it an “aha moment,” describing it as “a leadership opportunity to be a mentor and to connect other practitioners with cutting-edge science and engineering with nature solutions.” Danielle was excited about signing on: “I love the idea of sharing opportunities for EWN with others that haven’t had that experience before—being able to put EWN at the forefront and show that even if you haven’t done it before, you don’t need to be afraid of it.”     As Jeff says, it’s a two-way opportunity: “For me sitting at a higher level, I do engage with the Corps’s districts quite a bit, but there’s an opportunity to learn more about what’s happening on the ground. The Practice Leads provide incredible insight that helps EWN leadership really get the full picture of what is happening in the districts and where future opportunities are located. All four Leads are dedicated, motivated, and really inspire us to do more.”   The Practice Leads lead the https://ewn.erdc.dren.mil/?page_id=2871—an informal network of US Army Corps of Engineers practitioners, representing a variety of disciplines across the enterprise, that is working to advance the application of EWN principles, practices, and technologies to deliver nature-based solutions (which will be discussed in more detail in Episode 3). The Leads represent two practice areas—Coastal and Riverine. We discuss their experiences applying EWN in their districts and share how EWN approaches, including large, landscape-scale nature-based features, can be translated to other practitioners.   Elizabeth, a Coastal Practice Lead, describes the challenges Mobile District is facing along the Northern Gulf of Mexico coast associated with tropical storms, heavy rainfall, and rising seas: “Those coastal hazards can increase the stressors to our natural and manmade systems that serve as a frontline of defense and increase the risk to our growing coastal populations, critical infrastructure, as well as nationally significant habitats and species. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Congress authorized the Mississippi Coastal Improvements Program to address long-term risk reduction. An element of this was to restore offshore Mississippi barrier islands. This resulted with estimated annual storm-damage