As summer wanes and we celebrate back-to-school time with students, parents, and our friends in academia, we’re pleased to launch Season 8 of the Engineering With Nature® Podcast! Host Sarah Thorne recently caught up with Jeff King, National Lead of the Engineering With Nature (EWN) Program, to discuss what the EWN Team has been up to over the summer, share some highlights from Season 7, and offer a glimpse of what’s ahead in Season 8.

As Jeff describes, the EWN Team has had a busy summer extending the reach of EWN by collaborating with engineering and landscape architect colleagues and working with the EWN Proving Grounds leads on larger, more ambitious projects. “We’ve started to envision really large EWN projects that will be pursued at a systems level so that we can maximize the function and benefits that can be derived from these projects.” Some of these project ideas are being codified into “EWN Playbooks.” “I’m really excited about having an opportunity to publish those playbooks and have them available soon.” The project to develop a playbook for nature-based features being used in the Great Lakes region is described in a factsheet available on the EWN Website.

The EWN Team is also growing. Steven Bailey, a landscape architect, recently joined the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC). As Jeff notes, his hire reflects the growing importance of landscape architecture in EWN. And continuing EWN’s tradition of training the next generation of EWN practitioners, Claire Middendorf, an Environmental and Ecological Engineering student at Purdue University, completed a summer internship working with Burton Suedel, one of our frequent EWN Podcast hosts. Claire did some preliminary data collection for a project that will deal with extreme rainfall events for the US Marine Corps Base at 29 Palms, California. As Jeff notes, “To the credit of the Marine Corps, they recognize the` urgency of the situation, and they really want to lean into this and identify nature-based solutions (NBS) as a first-order strategy for creating additional resilience.”

Jeff is encouraged, and excited about the progress of EWN more broadly within USACE on the contribution EWN and NBS are making to the navigation, flood risk management, and ecosystem restoration missions. “Many elements within the USACE are now focused on NBS and wanting to have NBS be prioritized across all of our business lines.” For example, Jeff and other EWN colleagues have been working across USACE with colleagues in the Institute for Water Resources, the Engineering and Construction Division, and in Headquarters. “The conversations we’re having are focused on what can we do as an organization to accelerate implementation of NBS. One of the topics that comes up frequently is development of engineering guidance. So, across the USACE, that is something that we have prioritized – we want to make sure that we are taking research and transferring what we’ve learned into the field and implementing.”

Jeff and the EWN Team continued outreach to external partners to expand opportunities for integration of NBS. They have been reaching out to colleagues in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US and internationally to colleagues with the Environmental Agency in the United Kingdom and the Rijkswaterstaat, which is responsible for the design, construction, management and maintenance of the Netherlands’ primary infrastructure facilities.  As Jeff notes, “These are the principal organizations that helped develop the International Guidelines on Natural and Nature-Based Features (NNBF) back in 2021. So, we’re talking now about what is that next big effort.”

As Jeff and Sarah discussed, the excitement and passion for EWN was highlighted in Season 7. It was evident from Episode 1 with Ricardo Aguirre in Arizona, who spoke about regenerative agriculture, to Episode 13 with Laura Wendling in Norway, who talked about the application of NBS in cold regions. Those episodes represented two very different ecoregions and the unique challenges each faced. Episode 6 demonstrated new technical capabilities for the EWN Podcast by having 3 guests and 11 additional participants. The episode featured Al Kennedy, Burton Suedel, Andrew McQueen, and other participants at a workshop focused on 3D printing of nature-inspired structures. We were able to capture the excitement of workshop participants about the potential for using dredged material to create NBS structures, such as reefs and roots, to restore habitat and protect shorelines. Episodes 9, 10 and 11, featured our conversations with Katharine Hayhoe, Chief Scientist of The Nature Conservancy, whose approach to climate change communications and the “Head-to-Heart-to-Hands Gap” was—and continues to be—profound and inspiring. As Jeff says, “All of our guests expressed such passion and commitment to their work – and they really showed how they are making a difference. I have to say, I learned so much from all our guests in Season 7.”

Building on the energy and passion of Season 7, the theme for Season 8 is Channeling the Energy. Jeff explains he continues to be inspired by “the conversations that I have with all the wonderful people I meet and the energy in those conversations. People tell me about what they’re doing: working in the field; designing or constructing projects; or working in the classroom sharing information about their research or training the next generation of engineers, scientists, landscape architects, sociologists—all those wonderful disciplines that help to inspire and create that next generation of NBS practitioners. It’s that energy, and it’s very contagious. So, that’s our theme—channeling the energy.”

Listeners can expect another great lineup of episodes in Season 8, starting with Episode 1 on the nexus of climate change and health. In subsequent episodes we’ll talk about climate policy initiatives being driven by NOAA, how the Navy is incorporating NBS into their plans and projects, and some of the groundbreaking work being done by our EWN colleagues in both the policy and program areas. And as Jeff says, “That’s just really the start. We have big plans for Season 8!”

Mark your calendar for the launch of Season 8 on September 25! In Season 8, Episode 1, we’re speaking with Dr. Chris Lemon, Johns Hopkins Department of Emergency Medicine, Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health, and Fellow of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative. We focus on Chris’s journey into climate change and global health challenges. We hope you’ll tune in.