Joe Wheaton

Water, Earth, & Environmental Sciences

Professor

Contact Information

Office Hours: By Appointment
Office Location: NR 360
Phone: (435) 554-1247
Email: joe.wheaton@usu.edu
Additional Information:

Educational Background

PhD, Geography, University of Southhampton, 2008 Dissertation

Uncertainty in Morphological Sediment Budgeting of Rivers

MS, Hydrologic Sciences, University of California at Davis, 2003 Thesis

Rehabilitation of Spawning Habitat

BS, Hydrology, University of California at Davis, 2002

Biography

Joe Wheaton is a Professor of Riverscapes at Utah State University, riverscape scientist, restoration practitioner, and founder of the Riverscapes Consortium, advancing healthy riverscapes for all.

Teaching Interests

I teach across the continuum from undergraduate and graduate education to professional training for people already working in river and riverscape conservation and restoration. At USU, my regular teaching has included Fluvial Geomorphology, Ecohydraulics, Riverscape Restoration Design Capstones, and a series of 10 courses in Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration of Riverscapes. My teaching has also included geomorphic change detection, GIS and spatial analysis, partnering with beaver in restoration, and other intensive short courses in river restoration.

A particularly important part of my teaching is bringing together matriculated students and working professionals. I like classrooms where undergraduate and graduate students learn alongside agency staff, consultants, restoration practitioners, and other professionals who bring real projects, constraints, and experience into the learning environment. This creates opportunities for students to engage with current practice while professionals are exposed to emerging science, tools, and ways of thinking.

Much of my teaching is organized around learning by doing. Students and professionals work with real riverscapes, real data, and real decisions—developing the ability not simply to apply a method, but to observe carefully, formulate and test interpretations, make transparent decisions with imperfect information, act, monitor outcomes, and adapt. I am especially interested in teaching approaches that connect foundational understanding of riverscape processes with practical skills in assessment, planning, design, implementation, monitoring, and adaptive management.

My professional teaching extends beyond traditional university courses through workshops, short courses, and collaborative trainings with agencies and practitioner communities. I have taught over 80 such workshops and trainings. These have ranged from focused trainings in low-tech process-based restoration and beaver-assisted restoration to riverscape monitoring, planning, and decision-support tools.

Research Interests

My research is centered on understanding what makes riverscapes healthy, how they become degraded, and how their capacity for self-sustaining recovery can be protected or restored. I work at the interface of fluvial geomorphology, ecology, hydrology, restoration science, and geospatial analysis, with a strong emphasis on translating research into useful tools, frameworks, and practices.
Three broad themes organize much of my research:
1. Understanding fluvial ecogeomorphic dynamics and riverscape health — including how water, sediment, vegetation, wood, beaver, disturbance, and landforms interact to create and maintain complex riverscapes.
2. Riverscape conservation, restoration, resilience, and adaptation — particularly approaches that work with natural processes and existing recovery potential rather than relying exclusively on highly engineered interventions.
3. Advancing monitoring, modeling, and analytical tools across scales — developing methods that allow us to understand condition, change, and recovery potential from individual projects to entire river networks and regions, and packaging those methods so they are useful to both researchers and practitioners.

A recurring goal across these themes is to help close the gap between science and practice. I am particularly interested in work that can move beyond individual demonstration projects and support better decisions at the scale of entire riverscapes and river networks.

Awards

Overseas Research Studentship, 2003

Academic Universities U.K.

CItation In Recognition of Outstanding Undergraduate Accomplishments in Hydrology, 2002

University of California at Davis Hydrology Department

LAWR Opportunity Fund, 2002

University of California at Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources

CGA Scholarship Awards, 2001

California Groundwater Association

CGA Scholarship Awards, 2000

California Groundwater Association

ECA Scholarship, 2000

Engineering Contractors Association