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Enhancing Soil Health and Rewilding Our Landscapes One Stream at a Time
April 24 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
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Stream and floodplain restoration has become a billion-dollar industry in the United States (US) and is a popular management practice in the mid-Atlantic US. Floodplains are being restored to enhance hydrologic connectivity, reduce sediment erosion, and enhance runoff nitrogen removal via processes like denitrification. While these restorations have yielded important water quality benefits, much of the restoration focus is on enhancing stream form and function and very little attention is given to soil health on the restored floodplains. Compacted soils and poor soil conditions can undermine ecosystem functions and services and prevent the restoration from attaining its full potential. In this webinar, we will discuss how floodplain soil health can be protected and enhanced and present specific strategies and practices that need to be implemented. Healthy soils and floodplains will not only provide valuable water quality and aquatic habitat benefits, but will also contribute towards rewilding our landscapes and improving human health.
Speaker Bios:
Dr. Shree Inamdar is a Professor in the Plant & Soil Sciences department at the University of Delaware (UD). He received his PhD from Virginia Tech in Biological Systems Engineering. Until recently, he was also the Director of the Water Science & Policy Graduate Program at UD. His research interests are in studying water quality and watershed management, biogeochemistry and ecology of riparian ecosystems, human land use legacies and their impacts on our environment, and soil health. He has received multiple grants from the National Science Foundation, US Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Chesapeake Bay Trust. In his free time he likes to jog, hike, do gardening (play with soil!), and travel to beautiful nature destinations across the world.
Dr. Joe Galella earned his undergraduate degree in Geology from Franklin and Marshall College in 2011, his masters in Geo-environmental Studies from Shippensburg University in 2016 and his PhD from the University of Maryland in 2023. His research experience includes studying road salt pollution, stream restoration and the unintended consequences of colonial milldams in the Mid-Atlantic United States. His current research helps quantify the effectiveness of stream restorations over time by analyzing floodplain soils in restored and unrestored catchments.