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Assistant Professor
Phone: (919) 962-3876
E-mail: mwdoyle@email.unc.edu
Office: Saunders 326
Curriculum Vita (HTML
format)
Related links:
Research Web Page
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Research Interests
BioSketch
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. He works in the area of ecosystem
markets, and his more recent work focuses on identifying emerging
ecosystem markets, such as restoration through the decommissioning of
aging infrastructure. 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. His research seeks to understand how science, policies, and
markets interact to destroy or restore natural ecosystems, and where
these interactions can be influenced to increase the potential to sustain
or restore ecosystems. 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 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). In addition, for his work in bridging
environmental science and policy, 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. Almost
accidentally, I have become very interested in the role that rivers have
played in the American economy, and the role that federal policies have
purposely or inadvertently had on driving the economies and associated
river changes. For example, rivers to be used as transportation corridors
in the 1700s and 1800s, to be harnessed as hydropower in the early 1900s;
to be controlled as sources of flooding in the 1800s and 1900s; and now,
to be ¡®restored¡¯ and sold as an environmental commodity. My particular
theoretical interest in this is addressing whether there is a
characteristic river form that a particular economy leaves on the
landscape.
Some recent publications
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.
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