Related links:
On Leave 2009-2010
I am currently serving as the Frederick J. Clarke Visiting Scholar at the US Army Corps of Engineers-Institute for Water Resources at Fort Belvoir, outside Washington, DC. During this time I will be working on issues related to federal environmental policy. I will return to UNC in August 2010.
Lieutenant General Frederick J. Clarke, Chief of Engineers (1969-1973), was among the first heads of the Army Corps of Engineers to be faced with the concerns of the nascent environmental movement, which had been highly critical of the agency and its wetlands policy. Following passage of the Environmental Policy Act of 1969, General Clarke established the Environmental Advisory Board (EAB), comprised of environmental leaders, as a means for the Chief to gain outside, expert and independent advice on environmental issues facing the Corps. The Corps of Engineers - Institute for Water Resources (IWR) started the Frederick J. Clarke Fellowship to provide scholars with the opportunity to help advise the Corps on important policy issues related to their environmental mission.
Biography
Martin Doyle is an environmental geographer with training in hydrology and engineering, specializing in rivers. His research is at the interface of science, economics and policy of environmental management and restoration, particuarly focusing on the use of market mechanisms for environmental management and restoration. His research on infrastructure includes decommissioning dams and levees, as well as research on financing rehabilitation of aging drinking water and wastewater treatment infrastructure.Dr. Doyle works collaboratively with ecologists, engineers, and economists, as well as with state and federal agencies, and private industry. He has developed long-term research programs in which he and his students work alongside entrepreneurial mitigation bankers in order to more fully understand the realities and financial motivations for private investment in environmental markets.
Dr. Doyle is in the Department of Geography and the Institute for the Environment at the University of North Carolina. He holds a PhD in Earth Science from Purdue University, and a Masters in Environmental Engineering from Ole Miss. His research has resulted in several awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship (2009), a National Science Foundation Early Career Award (2005), the Nystrom Award from the Association of American Geographers (2004), the Horton Grant from the American Geophysical Union (2001), and the Chorafas Prize from the Chorafas Foundation in Switzerland (2002). For his work in bridging environmental science and policy, in 2009 was named the first Frederick J Clarke Scholar by the US Army Corps of Engineers. In 2008 Dr Doyle was named an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow by Stanford University, and received a GlaxoSmithKline Faculty Fellowship for Public Policy from the Institute for Emerging Issues.
He teaches courses in river processes, environmental geography, and river restoration, with courses ranging from 6 to 200 students. He advises graduate students and post-docs in geography, environmental engineering, and ecology programs. He is an active member in the Association of American Geographers, American Geophysical Union, the American Society for Civil Engineers, and the non-profit water development group, Lifewater International.
Statement of Research Interests
River System Science
The primary research area of my group is river system science, that is, the interaction of physical and biological processes in rivers. We primarily use field and modeling studies to understand the interaction of geomorphology, hydrology, hydraulics, ecology, and biogeochemistry. Our research spans ecosystems and scales, from analysis of biogeochemical dynamics at the river network scale to flume studies of turbulence and organic matter mobilization from stream beds. We have studied whitewater streams in the Adirondacks, urban streams in Chapel Hill, and blackwater streams on the coast of North Carolina. We place this research into an applied context via studies of river restoration, dam removal, and floodplain management, and use these different management activities as experiments from which to develop and test geomorphic and ecological theory.
Ecosystem Markets
The second area of my research is primarily focused on the emerging ecosystem commodities of stream mitigation and water quality trading programs. The applied part of this research is being done with Todd BenDor (City and Regional Planning at UNC), and is focused on understanding how current stream mitigation banking programs in North Carolina have developed over the past few years, the policies that have allowed them to develop, and where these practices are impacting state water resources. The more theoretical part of the work is being done with Morgan Robertson (Geography, Univ of Kentucky) and with Rebecca Lave (Geography, Indiana). This work is focused on how stream mitigation is affecting the application of geomorphology in stream restoration. I am also working with Andy Yates (Economics, Univ of Richmond) on a purely economic analysis of stream mitigation banking, and how the no-net-loss policy program can affect the size of restoration projects constructed.
Political Economy of U.S. Rivers
The final area of my research is focused on tracing the evolution of river economies in the United States. I am working, very slowly, on a book tracing the history of American Rivers from Colonial era to the present.
Doyle, M.W., E.H. Stanley, D. Havlick, M.J. Kaiser, G. Steinbach, W.L. Graf, G.E. Galloway and J.A. Riggsbee (2008, in press). Aging infrastructure and ecosystem restoration, Science, Jan 18 issue.
Manners, R., M.W. Doyle, and M.J. Small (2007). Structure and hydraulics of natural woody debris jams. Water Resources Research 43, W06432, doi: 10.1029/2006WR004910.
Doyle, M.W., F.D. Shields, K.F. Boyd, P.E. Skidmore, and D.E. Dominick (2007). Channel-forming discharge selection in river restoration design. Journal of Hydraulic Engineering 133: 831-837.
Fraser, J., M.W. Doyle and H. Young (2006). Creating effective flood mitigation policies, EOS 87(27): 265-270
Ensign, S.H., and M.W. Doyle (2006). Nutrient spiraling in streams and river networks. Journal of Geophysical Research 111, doi: G04009/2005JG000114.
Doyle, M.W., E.H. Stanley, D. Strayer, R. Jacobson, and J.C. Schmidt (2005). Effective discharge analysis of ecological processes in streams. Water Resources Research, 41, W1141, doi: 10.1029/2005WR004222.
Doyle, M.W. (2005). Incorporating hydrology into nutrient spiraling theory. Journal of Geophysical Research 110, G01003, doi: 10.1029/2005JG000015.
Doyle, M.W., and J.M. Harbor (2003). Modeling the effect of form and profile adjustments on channel equilibrium timescales. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 28: 1271-1287.
Doyle, M.W., E.H. Stanley, and J.M. Harbor (2003), Channel adjustments following two dam removals in Wisconsin. Water Resources Research. 39(1), 1011, doi: 10.1029/2002WR001714.
Doyle, M.W, E.H. Stanley and J.M. Harbor (2003). Towards policies and decision-making for dam removal. Environmental Management 31(4): 453-465.
