Joe WHO?
Thank you for visiting my website. I am a fluvial geomorphologist and river rat. These pages contain general information about my research and related interests in geomorphology and ecogeomorphology. I study physical aspects of riverscapes as well as feedbacks with the biota that occupy and alter them (i.e. ecogeomorphology). My research, teaching and service are focused on understanding basic curiosities about the dynamics of fluvial systems as well as a strong commitment to making science relevant to better manage, conserve and restore watersheds and their ecosystems. From a practical stand point, I want to see healthier riverscapes, and I am motivated to produce the science and methods that help people tackle these challenges in their riverscapes.  

2022-2023 Academic Year Sabbatical

Thanks to the generous support of the Collegium de Lyon and H2O'Lyon, I am spending my sabbatical in Lyon, France working with colleagues on "Operationalizing the Riverscapes Consortium Services into Practice"

My Work

First and foremost, I am a scientist and a Professor of Riverscapes at Utah State University's Department of Watershed Sciences. My primary focus is research, but I love teaching and mentoring students, and I invest a lot of time in outreach and community service to bring our science to diverse audiences. 
As a fluvial geomorphologist at a land-grant institution, I have focused much of my applied research on tackling the ecosystem and watershed management challenges we face. I have helped lead the charge to build a restoration program at Utah State that can train and inspire the next generation of restoration practitioners and policy makers while helping current professionals continue to grow and improve.
 I am committed to innovating the practice of river restoration, and I put my own theories to the test as a restoration practitioner.  I  am co-owner & founder of a small restoration consulting firm, Anabranch Solutions. Our primary focus is helping clients plan, design, build and adaptively manage low-tech process-based restoration projects that can scale up to the magnitude of challenges they face.

Building tools, Sharing big data & creative solutions to the challenges facing our riverscapes

Together with many talented and creative collaborators, we have built a consortium of researchers and software developers that build tools to better understand, simulate & manage our riverscapes - The Riverscapes Consortium. These tools transcend the spatial scales that make up riverscapes from the basic building blocks of rivers (hydraulic and geomorphic units) to entire drainage networks and watersheds across broad regional scales.

some network scale models WE Developed:

some Reach scale models we DEveloped:

My LAB

I have been extremely lucky in my career to be surrounded by inspiring, creative and talented scientists.  Some of my early mentors instilled in me the value of surrounding yourself with people that are smarter than yourself. My lab (the Wheaton ET-AL or Ecogeomorphology & Topographic Analysis Lab), located at the Fluvial Habitat Center in the Department of Watershed Sciences is the embodiment of this idea. We have a staff of graduate students, research scientists, technicians, surveyors, programmers and analysts that help make the research and science we do have a far greater reach.

Beaver & Low-Tech Process Based Restoration

For better or worse, one of  the things I have become known as is one of the 'beaver guys' for my research and work in leveraging the labor and ingenuity of a rodent and talented ecosystem engineer to help us more efficiently restore riverscapes.  A big focus for me has been on developing appropriate expectation management about  where such a strategy makes sense, versus where it may be inappropriate. 

The more general concept we've tried to push, is a scaleable restoration ethos, of trying to extend limited restoration dollars as far as they can go to achieve the greatest impacts. This is a 'low-tech' version of Process Based Restoration.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.