︎︎︎

Mapping of contextual actors (Wind, Waves and Currents) across the Great Lakes Basin with the potential to inform sensitive infrastructures.

Port Bay plan

Construction of Port Bay Feeder Bluff

Monitoring of Port Bay Feeder Bluff and its effects on barrier bar morphology – conducted with UAV and RTK equipment.

Illinois Beach State park Plan

Shore view of Ridge Reef at Illinois Beach State Park, showing the resulting effects of submerged infrastructure.

Section view of proposed wetland, created with beneficially-used sediment, and with morphological variability based on waves and currents.

Healthy Port Futures

The Healthy Port Futures Project is a collaboration between Sean Burkholder and Theresa Ruswick at the University of Pennsylvania and Brian Davis of the University of Virginia. The project is funded through the Great Lakes Protection Fund and aims to reconsider methods of coastal engineering and sediment management in and around small and medium-sized ports in the Great Lakes Basin. The focus on these ports, many of which occupy ecologically-valuable rivermouth locations provides an opportunity to test strategies that are more contextually sensitive and responsive. These strategies provide a valuable counterpoint to more blunt methods, designed as best management practices and applicable everywhere. Instead, Healthy Port Futures operates on the assumption that contextual conditions not only matter, but can be foundational to coastal design and management, something that is of particular value when considering the intermingled cultural, ecological and economic forces acting upon rivermouth port communities.

Led By: Sean Burkholder

︎︎︎

Iterative Physical Modeling

Timelapse imagery of iterative sediment transport experiments. These models allow for the easy comparison of different morphological configurations and transformations under wave action.

︎︎︎

Healthy Port Futures

︎︎︎

Iterative Physical Modeling

︎ ︎

︎ ︎ ︎