Using Floodplains to Promote Climate Resiliency and Sustainability
Emily Steenkamer, EIT
Jason Coleman
Ecotone
Forest Hill, MD
Authors: Emily Steenkamer & Jason Coleman
As our climate changes and the land around us continues to be manipulated, it is important to design and implement resilient and sustainable stream restoration projects to provide a positive impact on the environment as well as the public. With a changing climate, it is necessary to evaluate and design for larger storm events, such as the 100-year storm, as all storm events are becoming more frequent, and climate resiliency is more crucial than ever. Flood risk is an important variable to consider in stream restoration design, and hydrologic and hydraulic modeling is a necessary step in order to ensure a project’s resiliency and meet local, state and national floodplain regulations. Buildings and other structures, utilities, and properties within and adjacent to floodplains must be carefully considered when designing a stream restoration project to avoid negative impacts such as increasing water surface elevations. Developing a stream restoration design that is capable of handling larger storm events is imperative for a project’s long-term sustainability and climate resiliency. Resilient floodplains can be advantageous to decreasing water surface elevations, attenuating peak flows and storage, promoting hyporheic flow exchange, distributing flood energy across the floodplain, and maximizing vegetative filtering. Stream and floodplain restoration can be used to decrease water surface elevations and minimize flood risk, and a project that is designed to withstand larger storm events will be resilient and sustainable in the long term.
Note: We will share project-specific examples to provide support.
About Emily Steenkamer, EIT
Emily Steenkamer has 3.5 years of experience as a Water Resources Engineer focusing on stream and wetland restoration and works as an engineer at Ecotone, Inc. She graduated from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry with a B.S. in Environmental Resources Engineering and is working to become a licensed professional engineer. She has experience in hydrologic and hydraulic analysis, typically using HEC-RAS for one-dimensional hydraulic modeling and SMS/TUFLOW for two-dimensional hydraulic modeling; field data collection efforts, including geomorphic assessments, subsurface soil data collection, and BANCS data collection; design, grading, and plan set development for numerous stream and wetland restoration projects; and TMDL Protocol credit calculations using the latest methodologies. She looks forward to providing construction oversight to the first stream restoration project that she has led the design for beginning in June 2023, which will be constructed by Ecotone.
www.linkedin.com/in/emily-steenkamer-eit-a28959108
About Jason Coleman, PE, CFM
Jason Coleman is a professional engineer and certified floodplain manager with 22 years of experience in eco-restoration and floodplain management. His passion for streams comes from spending time fly-fishing Rocky Mountain streams while at the University of Utah, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in civil and environmental engineering. He currently volunteers as the Secretary of the Maryland Association of Floodplain and Stormwater Managers (MAFSM). In his free time he is an unpaid Uber driving so his kids can live their best lives.
www.linkedin.com/in/jason-coleman-p-e-cfm-45146a13