Federal Grant Award Summary

The University of Idaho received a $167,470 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050), effective February 1, 2026 through January 31, 2029. This award supports fundamental research investigating the impact of cohesive materials—including clay, microbial biofilms, and biological silks from aquatic organisms—on critical shear stress and gravel motion in riverbeds. The project will deliver a combination of laboratory experiments, field measurements from gravel-bed rivers, and predictive modeling tools designed to improve the accuracy of sediment transport predictions.

The research will produce quantifiable outputs addressing critical uncertainties in bedload transport modeling, including measured data on biological and non-biological cohesion in riverbed systems, experimental findings on how cohesive materials affect gravel resisting forces and flow conditions, and a validated mechanistic model for predicting critical shear stress in the presence of cohesive materials. These deliverables will directly inform sustainable river management practices, flood mitigation strategies, and habitat restoration efforts, while reducing significant uncertainties—often spanning multiple orders of magnitude—that currently plague sediment transport predictions used in infrastructure management and flood-risk assessment applications.