I am a Global Practitioner for Natural Treatment Systems at Jacobs in our Water Market. I have focused on ecological engineering since I began graduate school in 1991. I have an MS in Water Resources Management, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an MS in Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California-Davis. My certifications are professional engineer (MN), senior ecologist (Ecological Society of America), certified lake manager (North American Lake Management Society), and certified ecological designer (AEES).

If one word could summarize an ongoing theme of my work, it would be “scale”. A major technical focus is aquatic: restoration of lakes, drinking water reservoirs, mine reclamation and coastal dead zones. I also work with treatment marshes (surface flow wetlands) and treatment (media based) wetlands. Mine reclamation has been a major driver of working with ecological design scales beyond a shoreline or wetland berm.  

My early focus was on technology development (including 13 patents) of ecologically engineered wastewater treatment at small scales – Living Machines and treatment wetlands. Upon joining CH2M Hill (later Jacobs) in 2008, my wastewater focus shifted from small flows to large flows. My, until then, underused limnology education suddenly became a key focus entirely oriented to in-basin, rather than watershed, restoration work. The freshwater work has led to an ongoing focus on coastal hypoxia/anoxia. I regularly do ecotechnology development depending on the needs and scales of projects.

Because my work has been directly or indirectly tied to performance-based design, I have had to systematically deal with the impacts of scale. I have come to understand that scale is a core knowledge domain in ecological engineering: (1) what forcing functions operate at a particular scale, (2) how those functions can be altered by various engineering methods (both soft and hard), and (3) how the ecosystem responds to those changes in the direction intended by design.

From project experience, I can broadly state a few things about scale. There is no pond in bathtub, no lake in a puddle, nor a sea in a lake. A 100 ha treatment marsh has very little in common with a 100 m² media based treatment wetland. Knowledge gained from an algae biofuel pilot is dismally deficient when applied to economically viable, full-scale algae biofuel production. Ecological reclamation changes fundamentally from a 1 ha plot to 20 km² divided into 10 ha restoration “pixels”. One has to be very thoughtful when scaling up from pilots or previous design work. Scale introduces strong qualitative difference in addition to quantitative differences. Ecologists know that ecosystem dynamics are strongly scale dependent. Engineers must account for scale in design. Ecological engineers need to learn these elements of scale and synthesize them.

I have been fortunate in having a wide geographic scope of projects: many states in the US, Canada, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, Israel, United Kingdom, Italy, and the Baltic region. Before my current career, I was a marine salvage and diving officer in the US Navy Reserve. In that career, I went many places by ship in the North Pacific. Before that, I attended university in Costa Rica and Brazil. This experience with varied geographies, cultures, and languages informs my view of ecological engineering practice as being intimately tied to place.

My long association with the American Ecological Engineering Society has been an ongoing highlight of my career. The influence of AEES on my career has been profound. To have become an AEES Fellow makes me very happy and is a great honor.

I live in Minnesota with my wife close to our daughter, and with my friendly dogs. Whenever I can, I go fishing locally in a boat that I built, do a bit of gardening, or make furniture in my woodshop.