Civil engineers work to maintain navigability of Great Lakes

Carol Miller, professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Shawn McElmurry, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, together with Mark Baskaran, professor of geology in the WSU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, are conducting research through a subcontract from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is tasked with maintaining the navigability of waters of the United States. Miller, McElmurry and Baskaran were awarded a grant as part of the federally funded Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) program for their work "Sediment Yield and Dam Capacity in the Great Lakes Watershed: Field Reconnaissance and Laboratory Analysis.

"The project is providing better understanding of the mechanisms influencing sediment production and storage in the watershed and is expected to prove useful in managing sediment buildup. In the second year of a three-year, $370,000 grant, the researchers are using carbon dating techniques to analyze core samples of sediment behind dams. Identifying buildup patterns over a period of time will help the corps establish a more efficient dredging schedule to reduce sediment.