Abstract:
Following a brief introduction of IIHR – Hydroscience and Engineering and its associated research programs, the seminar will focus on water resources challenges in Iowa and across the agricultural Midwest at the intersection of a changing climate and the intensification of industrialized agriculture.
Bio:
Larry Weber is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Edwin B. Green Chair in Hydraulics at the University of Iowa (UI). He holds BS, MS, and PhD degrees in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Iowa.
Weber serves as the director of IIHR—Hydroscience & Engineering, a century-old fluids-focused UI research center. In 2009, he co-founded the Iowa Flood Center (IFC) and currently serves as its director, he also co-founded the Iowa Nutrient Research Center (at ISU) in 2014. For more than a decade Weber led the Iowa Watershed Approach, a statewide research project to enhance Iowa’s flood resilience and water quality.
His areas of research include: large-river restoration; coupling first principles computational fluid dynamics with water quality and individual-based ecological models; laboratory and computational modeling of hydraulic structures; modeling and design of fish passage facilities; open-channel hydraulics and flood inundation modeling; linking large-scale watershed models to flood response and resiliency; and ice mechanics and cold regions engineering.
Weber spends much of his free time on a personal conservation and restoration project on his property near Iowa City. “Old Man’s Timber” includes 120 acres of restored timber and tallgrass prairie, a pond, vegetable gardens, an orchard, an apiary, an off-grid timber-framed cabin, and a reconstructed and restored 19th-century barn.