Jonathan Czuba, P.E.

Program Focus

Dr. Czuba's research program extends collaboratively across multiple disciplines to advance the understanding of riverine ecosystems and their response to human and natural forces. The challenge to provide water, food, and energy for a growing population in the context of climate change is and will continue to place increasing pressure on riverine ecosystems. Dr. Czuba's research group incorporates theory, modeling, and field measurements to improve our understanding of these complex systems and better inform river management. Dr. Czuba's research largely focuses on the development and application of modeling tools to better predict the transport and fate of sediment and nutrients in rivers, organized around three major themes:

(1) Understanding the fundamentals of stream and floodplain restoration, specifically quantifying the form and function of natural streams and floodplains to inform stream restoration efforts.

(2) River network modeling and connectivity, specifically modeling the transport of sediment and nutrients on the branching structure of a river network to determine how change at one location on the landscape manifests change at locations downstream and to inform river basin management.

(3) Ecohydraulics and ecomorphodynamics (eco-: ecosystem + -hydraulics: dynamics of flowing water; -morphodynamics: evolution of landforms in response to the erosion and deposition of sediment), specifically how flowing water and moving sediment affect and are affected by the living components of the riverine ecosystem (e.g., plants, fish, freshwater mussels) to inform aquatic ecosystem management and restoration.

Selected Recent Publications

Christensen, N.D., E.M. Prior, J.A. Czuba, and W.C. Hession (2024), Stream restoration that allows for self-adjustment can increase channel-floodplain connectivity, Journal of Ecological Engineering Design, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.21428/f69f093e.e8ffa1a3

Sumaiya, S., J.A. Czuba, W.T. Russ, and R. Hoch (2024), Potential for juvenile freshwater mussels to settle onto riverbeds from field investigation, Journal of Ecohydraulics. https://doi.org/10.1080/24705357.2024.2347228

Sumaiya, S., J.T. Schubert, J.A. Czuba, and J.E. Pizzuto (2024), Incorporating flowpaths as an explicit measure of river-floodplain connectivity to improve estimates of floodplain sediment deposition, Geomorphica, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.59236/geomorphica.v1i1.25

Czuba, J.A., and G.H. Allen (2023), When does a stream become a river? River Research and Applications, 39(9), 1925-1929. https://doi.org/10.1002/rra.4185

Czuba, J.A., M. Hirschler, E.A. Pratt, A. Villamagna, and P.L. Angermeier (2022), Bankfull shear velocity predicts embeddedness and silt cover in gravel streambeds, River Research and Applications, 38(1), 59-68. https://doi.org/10.1002/rra.3878

Christensen, N.D., J.A. Czuba, S. Triantafillou, C.A. Copenheaver, J.A. Peterson, and W.C. Hession (2022), Establishment and persistence of trees growing in the channel of an intermittent stream in a temperate, karst environment, Water Resources Research, 58(5), e2021WR031528. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021WR031528

Hansen, A.T., T. Campbell, S.J. Cho, J.A. Czuba, B.J. Dalzell, C.L. Dolph, P.L. Hawthorne, S. Rabotyagov, Z. Lang, K. Kumarasamy, P. Belmont, J.C. Finlay, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, K.B. Gran, C.L. Kling, and P. Wilcock (2021), Integrated assessment modeling reveals near-channel management as cost-effective to improve water quality in agricultural watersheds, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A., 118(28), e2024912118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2024912118