Symposium Short Courses 2025

Short Course registration is now open to everyone through the symposium registration portal.

To register, please click on the “Short Course Registration” button below.

Short Course Pricing:

  • $400 Full Day
  • $200 Half Day

Registration Instructions:

  • Once you have logged into the registration portal, select Individual Registration and navigate through the system to the Registration & Tickets page.
  • Scroll down to the bottom of the list of ticket options to view the complete list of offered Short Courses.
  • Add your selected short course and continue to the payment page to complete your ticket purchase.

Full Day Short Courses


Ecohydraulics

Full Day

Instructors: Rocko Brown, PhD & Joseph Merz, PhD

Ecohydraulics is a multidisciplinary field and practice that combines ecology, biology, chemistry, engineering, hydrology, hydraulics and geomorphology to understand how aquatic organisms and their ecosystems are shaped and evolve with lotic systems. This course aims to introduce ecohydraulics for people interested in learning about some of the basic principles and concepts in ecohydraulics, with a focus on applications to solve real world management questions.

Course objective and anticipated skill transfer: Understanding current and future flow and fisheries relationships is at the heart of applied and basic fisheries science and management. Advances in science and technology, such as numerical modeling and field-based evaluations of fish community and flow structure, make this topic important.

Material to be covered:

  • Introduction and history of ecohydraulics
  • How aquatic organism use lotic systems
  • Human influences on aquatic systems
  • Characterizing water flow and aquatic habitats
  • Habitat suitability
  • Habitat suitability modeling 
  • Case study 1 – Kings River – Incorporating Populations
  • Case study 2 – Advanced Topics 

Target audience and recommended prerequisites: We intend this course for new employees and journey level professionals seeking an introduction or refresher on ecohydraulics.


Facilitating in the Wild: Working with Complexity and Diversity

Full Day

Instructor: Maggie Chumbley

A facilitation short course on how to run a room so you get great participation, balanced voices, and progress on chronic challenges.

Join this short course to brush up on your foundational facilitation skills, and then learn practical methods to lead groups better when things are complex, stakeholders come from diverse backgrounds and adaptive strategy is your aim. You’ll leave feeling tuned up with not only a plan to improve everyday meetings, but also doable designs for ambitious large systems projects. You may even gain a reputation for holding meetings that people want to come to, aren’t boring, and where things get done. 

Material to be covered:

Foundational Facilitation

    • Clarity of purpose of your session and priming the group
    • Does every agenda item have a goal and is there an interactive activity? (if this meeting can’t be an email, then prove it)
    • Analysis of how good design makes for the group dynamic and results you want

Adaptive Strategy: How to facilitate and lead among complex systems

    • Seeing your system through the lens of complexity
    • Fostering the right amount of structure, and letting direction arise. 

4-5 structures to aid facilitating strategically in the wild

    •  Un-fancy methods to change the pattern of engagement in the group.
    • Doable moves you can apply right away.

Recommended pre-symposium reading and/or web site:

Liberating Structures

Nine Emerging and Connected Organizational and Leadership Principles


Spatial Analysis of Streams and Watersheds with QGIS

Full Day

Instructor: Konrad Hafen, PhD

QGIS is free, open source, GIS software with powerful capabilities for stream and watershed analysis. This course will teach the basics of using QGIS to identify and analyze streams and watersheds using existing hydrographic and boundary datasets, elevation data (moderate and high-resolution DEMs), and satellite images. These concepts introduce the skills required to conduct geospatial analysis for fluvial systems and produce insightful products that address relevant questions and management actions.

Course objective and anticipated skill transfer:  

Learn the basic geospatial analysis workflows to transform publicly available geospatial data into actionable information. Students will learn how to work with vector and raster dataset and create and analyze informative derivative data products.

Material to be covered:

  • Introduction to course objectives, course material, and QGIS
  • Geoprocessing methods for watershed and political boundary analysis
  • Stream networks from elevation data
  • Relative elevation model (REM; or detrended DEM) from high resolution elevation data
  • Watershed vegetation analysis through time with NLCD and satellite data

Target audience and recommended prerequisites:

This course is intended for students and employees with a grasp of GIS basics that would like an introduction to the QGIS software and/or the fundamentals of geospatial analysis for fluvial systems. Basic understanding of GIS principles (data types, creating data, basic geoprocessing) is recommended.

Software to be loaded prior to class:
QGIS Desktop
Link to required software: https://qgis.org/download/


Indigenizing Restoration

Full Day

Instructors: Serina Fast Horse and Toby Query

How can we realign our projects and ourselves to form better relationships with the land and its First Peoples?  What are examples of projects that acknowledge this history of the land, its peoples, and include not just ecological restoration but cultural and spiritual restoration? 

In this workshop, we will have a dialogue about the history of native peoples and white supremacy in the northwest and how it intersects with ecological restoration. We will be using the example of the Shwah Kuk wetland enhancement project which includes ITECK (Indigenous Traditional Ecological and Cultural Knowledge) as well as Western methods.  We will compare ITECK approaches and western approaches and look for common ground, including themes of healing through reciprocity, respect, and relationships. We will share learnings and challenges faced in our project when creating a co-created and co-managed project between the urban native community (including Portland State University’s Indigenous Nations Studies program) and the City of Portland, that will support your future projects with a wider and more inclusive spirit.

Course objective and anticipated skill transfer:  The objective to show the importance of partnering with Indigenous community members in a respectful manner and steps that can be taken to foster relationships.  You will learn how projects can meld ITECK and western knowledge systems.

Material to be covered:  General history of native people in the US.  ITECK and western knowledge systems that are applied to land stewardship.

Target audience and recommended prerequisites:  Anyone interested in partnering with Indigenous people in a land stewardship project. 

Recommended pre-symposium reading and/or websites: The Confluence Project; Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer; Original Instructions by Melissa K. Nelson; “On the role of traditional ecological knowledge as a collaborative concept: a philosophical study” by Kyle Whyte


Half Day Short Courses


Speaking of Science — Delivering Inspired Presentations

Half Day: Morning

Instructors: Janine Castro

We are offering a Part 1 online on January 24th from 9am-12pm PST. This will allow those who are presenting at RRNW time to incorporate the information from this great workshop into their presentations. Part 2 will be in person on Monday February 3.

Scientists and engineers should not be condemned to dry, monotonous, and uninspired presentations, because science is not boring. River restoration is one of the most exciting and dynamic fields of science and it is up to us to reflect our enthusiasm and passion in every talk we give and every message we deliver. Improve your public speaking skills, feel less nervous, and actually enjoy getting up in front of a crowd. Become a river restoration champion! Join me to learn a few simple techniques to dramatically improve your delivery and your impact.  You will leave the workshop armed with useful skills to develop and deliver inspired presentations and to improve your everyday communication. Whether you are a seasoned speaker or a relative novice, this course is for you.

Course objective and anticipated skill transfer: If you would like to improve your public speaking and science communication skills, please join me for a half-day session on making your presentation interesting and effective, while also reducing your stress and actually enjoying the experience.  Participants will leave the workshop with a greater skill set, including a comprehensive checklist and personal coaching, to develop and deliver presentations, which is directly transferrable to our everyday communication. The workshop is highly interactive and builds on the collective experience of the audience and the instructor.

Target audience and recommended prerequisites: Everyone…especially if you will be speaking at RRNW or any other scientific conference.


Sediment Transport in Stream Channel Assessment and Design

Half Day: Afternoon

Instructor: Peter Wilcock, PhD

How do you account for sediment transport when assessing or designing a stream channel? When do you have to worry about scour, aggradation, or channel shifting? How do you accommodate uncertainty in sediment supply? When is a more comprehensive sediment study merited? What tools are available to assess the situation? Stream channel assessment and design begins with identification of desired channel behavior (static? dynamic? threshold? alluvial? both?) and then uses estimates of water and sediment supply to explore design alternatives. Uncertainty in water and sediment supply is explicitly included in assessing channel performance. A risk framework is used for threshold channels; alluvial channels are evaluated in terms of the probability and magnitude of undesirable aggradation or degradation. There are no precise answers in sediment transport, but there are tools available to evaluate the consequence of different management and design choices. A computational tool will be presented that assists in estimating the sensitivity of channel performance to uncertainty in sediment supply. The tool includes river state diagrams useful for reconnaissance evaluation and channel stability diagrams useful at the planning stage.

Course objective and anticipated skill transfer: Develop strategies for assessing and designing desirable conditions of sediment transport in stream channels. Use spreadsheet tools linking water and sediment supply to threshold and alluvial river dynamics.

Material to be covered:

  • Problem Definition: Transport principles with application to desired stream behavior
  • Channel hydraulics and threshold channels
  • Sediment supply and transport capacity; alluvial channels
  • Pitfalls, risk, and strategy for decision making
  • Spreadsheet application & discussion

Target audience and recommended prerequisites: The course is intended for those who wish to evaluate and manage sediment supply and transport in stream channels, including the potential for scour, aggradation, and channel shifting. A rudimentary familiarity with stream hydraulics and transport is expected. Background reading will be provided.

Recommended pre-symposium reading and/or web site:

  1. Background on Sediment Transport:
    Wilcock, P; Pitlick, J; Cui, Y. 2009. Sediment Transport Primer: Estimating Bed-Material Transport in Gravel-bed Rivers. RMRS-GTR-226. USDA Forest Service.
  2. Background on Design Approach:
    Wilcock, P. 2023. Beyond Bankfull. SEDHYD Proceedings. 

Readings can be found with other goodies at https://qcnr.usu.edu/wats/programs/short-courses/sediment-transport/wilcock/

Notebook computers required? YES

Software to be loaded prior to class: MS Excel

Links to the required software: Excel files will be distributed directly to class in January. Related spreadsheets and other stuff can be found at https://qcnr.usu.edu/wats/programs/short-courses/sediment-transport/wilcock/