Researcher of the Month

Dr. Bruce Rhoads

Bruce L. Rhoads, is Professor and Head of the Geography department at the U of I, and the director of CWACES. He was also recently named an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Geology, and is a Departmental Affiliate in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Studies, a position he has held since 1998. A Pennsylvania native, Dr. Rhoads received his B.A. in 1980 from Shippensburg University (Pennsylvania) in Geoenvironmental Studies. He then went on to pursue postgraduate study in Geography, earning his M.A. at Michigan State University (1982), and his Ph.D. at Arizona State University (1986). At Michigan State, he completed coursework in both Geology and Geography, and it was here that Bruce made the decision to pursue Geography beyond the M.A. At Arizona State, Dr. Rhoads shifted to a focus on rivers, and his Ph.D. thesis was entitled, “Process and Response in Desert Mountain Fluvial Systems,” which he completed under the supervision of Will Graf, a prominent fluvial geomorphologist. One frustration surfaced at Arizona State, and that was the lack of water! In some ways, Bruce enjoyed this, as the direct results of fluvial action on channel form could be observed directly; however, the lack of water also made it difficult to conduct research on fluvial processes.

After completing his Ph.D. in 1986,  Dr. Rhoads accepted a position in the Geography department at the University of Illinois and has been living in Champaign-Urbana ever since. Dr. Rhoads says that the university has been a wonderful home for the past 21 years, as it is a great university with abundant resources and opportunities for research. At the U of I, Dr. Rhoads has established a research program focusing upon three primary areas of interest: 1) watershed science in human-dominated landscapes, 2) river dynamics and their relation to human modifications, and 3) the philosophy of physical geography and its relation to the discipline of Geography as a whole. Living in the Midwest has allowed him to explore the geomorphic form and function of agricultural drainage systems. Stream naturalization in human-dominated landscapes is also an interest of Dr. Rhoads. Naturalization seeks to enhance environmental quality by integrating the perspectives of geomorphology, engineering, ecology, and social science. He has combined social aspects of stream management with science and engineering through interdisciplinary projects he conducted with other scientists, engineers and geographers at the U of I. He has also examined how the geomorphic characteristics of streams influence fish habitat. Much of his work on river dynamics has focused on the interactions among flow, sediment movement and channel form at stream confluences. A significant amount of this work has been conducted at small confluences. However, he is expanding this work to large-river confluences through a project currently funded by the National Science Foundation. His work on the philosophy of physical geography has attempted to provide a foundation for thinking about geomorphological inquiry, why it is undertaken, and how it connects to other sciences.

In addition to his research contributions, Dr. Rhoads has received numerous grants and awards, including the recent receipt of the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2005-2006). He has published many refereed journal articles, and book chapters during his career, and is a member of several professional organizations. He has also served as a geomorphologic consultant.

Presently, Dr. Rhoads is co-PI (with Murugesu Sivapalan, Praveen Kumar, and Don Wuebbles) of an NSF funded project with the goal of advancing synthesis in hydrologic science. Dr. Rhoads believes that this project is a direct result of CWACES and provides a model of how CWACES can serve the research community in the future. In this latest project, CWACES provides the framework in which scientists from multiple disciplines can interact to tackle research problems focusing on water. A goal is for this opportunity to lead to future projects that will help establish CWACES as a major center of excellence in water research.