Biography

Mr. McDonald is a hydrologist with 20 years of experience working on general water resources, flow and sediment transport dynamics and the emerging field of eco-hydrology. He has extensive experience performing field, laboratory and computational research on river flow and sediment transport associated with regulated and unregulated rivers related to instream flow requirements and physical habitat. He has been associated with numerous water quantity and quality studies including: precipitation runoff studies of watersheds, contaminant transport of PCB laden sediments, and predictive models of mined pit-lake water quality. His expertise in surface water flow and sediment transport has been used to support litigation of environmental lawsuits. He is the principal developer of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Multi-Dimensional Surface Water Modeling System (MD_SWMS) and co-developer of the iRIC modeling system (www.i-ric.org).

Research Intrest

aquatic ecosystems ecological processes environmental assessment freshwater ecosystems habitats

List of Publications
Nelson, J.M., McDonald, R.R., Kinzel, P.J., and Legleiter, C.J., 2011, Using computational models to improve remotely sensed estimates of river bathymetry, Proceedings of the 2011 River, Coastal and Estuarine Morphodynamics Meeting, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Nelson, J.M., McDonald, R.R., Kinzel, P.J., and Shimizu, Y., 2012, Using Computational Modeling of River Flow with Remotely Sensed Data to Infer Channel Bathymetry, River Flow 2012, Proceedings of the International Conference on Fluvial Hydraulics, September 5-7, 2012, San Jose, Costa Rica, 8p.
Stogner, Robert W., Sr.; Nelson, Jonathan M.; McDonald, Richard R.; Kinzel, Paul J.; Mau, David P., 2013. Prediction of suspended-sediment concentrations at selected sites in the Fountain Creek watershed, Colorado, 2008-09. U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2012-5102, vii, 36 p.