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. I'm really excited about having an opportunity to publish these as ‘EWN Playbooks’ and have them available soon.” 

The EWN Team is also growing. Steven Bailey, a landscape architect, recently joined the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC). 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.

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. The conversations we're having are focused on what can we do as an organization to accelerate implementation of NBS.”

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. 

The theme for Season 8 is Channeling the Energy. That Jeff explains is inspired by the energy and excitement in the conversations that he has with all the EWN and NBS practitioners, collaborators and educators that he meets. “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, including topics such as the nexus of climate change and health, 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.

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.

For more information and resource links, please visit the EWN Podcast page on the EWN website at https://www.engineeringwithnature.org/  

• Jeff King at LinkedIn
• Sarah Thorne at LinkedIn
• Dave Trafford at LinkedIn