• Kansas City District’s Jesseca Alexander selected for ERDC University

    Researchers from five U.S. Army Corps of Engineer (USACE) Districts have been selected for the 2022 session of the Engineer Research and Development Center University (ERDC-U). Environmental Engineer Jesseca Alexander of the Northwest Division’s Kansas City District was chosen as a participant for this detail program, which is now in its seventh year.
  • Commentary: What comes next as Charleston storm surge study nears completion

    As the Army Corps of Engineers’ Charleston District wraps up the feasibility study on reducing the risk from coastal storm surge to the Charleston peninsula, I not only applaud the study team and the city of Charleston for confronting a coastal challenge as formidable — and indeed inevitable — as storm surge inundation, but I also thank members of the greater Charleston public for their input and involvement as resolute stewards of this beautiful community.
  • Autonomous GPR Surveys using the Polar Rover Yeti

    Abstract: The National Science Foundation operates stations on the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland to investigate Earth’s climate history, life in extreme environments, and the evolution of the cosmos. Understandably, logistics costs predominate budgets due to the remote locations and harsh environments involved. Currently, manual ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys must preceed vehicle travel across polar ice sheets to detect subsurface crevasses or other voids. This exposes the crew to the risks of undetected hazards. We have developed an autonomous rover, Yeti, specifically to conduct GPR surveys across polar ice sheets. It is a simple four-wheel-drive, battery-powered vehicle that executes autonomous surveys via GPS waypoint following. We describe here three recent Yeti deployments, two in Antarctica and one in Greenland. Our key objective was to demonstrate the operational value of a rover to locate subsurface hazards. Yeti operated reliably at −30 ◦C, and it has good oversnow mobility and adequate GPS accuracy for waypoint-following and hazard georeferencing. It has acquired data on hundreds of crevasse encounters to improve our understanding of heavily crevassed traverse routes and to develop automated crevasse-detection algorithms. Importantly, it helped to locate a previously undetected buried building at the South Pole. Yeti can improve safety by decoupling survey personnel from the consequences of undetected hazards. It also enables higher-quality systematic surveys to improve hazard-detection probabilities, increase assessment confidence, and build datasets to understand the evolution of these regions. Yeti has demonstrated that autonomous vehicles have great potential to improve the safety and efficiency of polar logistics.
  • U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Discovers More Cannon in Savannah River

    SAVANNAH, Ga. – The Savannah District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has completed maintenance dredging in the Savannah River and recovered additional cannon, bringing the total brought up to 19.
  • 21-0893; Louisiana Department of Transportation

    The Louisiana Department of Transportation proposes to decommission the Belle Chase Tunnel and remove the existing Judge Perez Bridge over the Algiers Canal West and East levee, vicinity of levee stations, 682+24 and 1083+29, respectively, at Belle Chasse, Louisiana, in Plaquemines Parish. The figures attached provide additional details.
  • PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD BEGINS FOR PROPOSED REGIONAL CATEGORICAL PERMISSION PROGRAM FOR SECTION 408 REQUESTS

    The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers , Great Lakes and Ohio River Division is seeking public comments; federal, state, and local agencies and officials; tribes; and other interested parties regarding the proposed Section 408 Categorical Permission.
  • Corps joins Fort Irwin leaders to cut the ribbon on new library

    Representatives with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District joined Fort Irwin leaders March 9 to cut the ribbon on a new library – signifying the facility’s grand opening – at Fort Irwin. The Corps’ LA District managed the construction of the $6-million facility, which replaces a more than 25-year-old temporary library structure on the installation.
  • Corps of Engineers selects Enbridge Line 5 tunnel project EIS contractor

    The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Detroit District, expects the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process for Enbridge Line 5’s tunnel permit application to begin soon following its selection of a contractor to prepare the EIS. The Detroit District, responsible for the tunnel project permit request review, selected Maryland-based Potomac-Hudson Engineering, Inc. as the third-party contractor to prepare the EIS for Enbridge’s proposed Line 5 Tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac. An EIS is a thorough and comprehensive National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) document the Detroit District will use in making a permit decision.
  • Corps of Engineers’ Fountain City Service Base repairs to begin soon

    ST. PAUL, Minn. – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, anticipates construction to begin in April 2022 at its Fountain City Service Base in Fountain City, Wisconsin.
  • The Blowing Snow Hazard Assessment and Risk Prediction Model: A Python Based Downscaling and Risk Prediction for Snow Surface Erodibility and Probability

    Abstract: Blowing snow is an extreme terrain hazard causing intermittent severe reductions in ground visibility and snow drifting. These hazards pose significant risk to operations in snow-covered regions. While many ingredients-based forecasting methods can be employed to predict where blowing snow is likely to occur, there are currently no physically based tools to predict blowing snow from a weather forecast. However, there are several different process models that simulate the transport of snow over short distances that can be adapted into a terrain forecasting tool. This report documents a downscaling and blowing-snow prediction tool that leverages existing frameworks for snow erodibility, lateral snow transport, and visibility, and applies these frameworks for terrain prediction. This tool is designed to work with standard numerical weather model output and user-specified geographic models to generate spatially variable forecasts of snow erodibility, blowing snow probability, and deterministic blowing-snow visibility near the ground. Critically, this tool aims to account for the history of the snow surface as it relates to erodibility, which further refines the blowing-snow risk output. Qualitative evaluations of this tool suggest that it can provide more precise forecasts of blowing snow. Critically, this tool can aid in mission planning by downscaling high-resolution gridded weather forecast data using even higher resolution terrain dataset, to make physically based predictions of blowing snow.