Robbin B. Sotir, President of Robbin B. Sotir & Associates, Inc., Keynote Speaker

 

Robbin B. Sotir, the President of Robbin B. Sotir & Associates, Inc., is a leading practitioner and educator in the field of soil bioengineering.  From her perspective, “soil bioengineering goes beyond viewing land systems as connected structures alone, but further views them as systems with integrated functions; fulfilling the needs for the new century where technology will allow people to live, work and recreate wherever they like – and they will choose healthy beautiful places”. Sotir 2004.   In the past 33 years, Ms. Sotir has served on interdisciplinary teams, analyzing, designing and overseeing construction of over 400 projects in rivers, streams, shoreline, wetland buffers and upland slope stabilization and mitigation in North America, Europe and Southeast Asia. She recognizes and addresses the interdependencies between the environment and engineering, and the need to achieve multiple objectives in solving complex problems. She is internationally known for her work in the evaluation and design of environmentally sensitive projects throughout the watershed.

Ms. Sotir's efforts and commitment to soil bioengineering has had a major impact on the development and success of this technology. This made evident by the book she co-authored with Donald H. Gray,  Biotechnical and Soil Bioengineering Slope Stabilization, published by Wiley in 1996 (2003 translated to Japanese and 2005 in Chinese). The main purpose of this book is to illustrate the interdisciplinary nature of soil bioengineering and its dependence on sound engineering practices, and integrated ecological practices. Her work emphasizes an integrated professional approach; first to understand the behavior and function, second to determine if intervention is appropriate, third to clarify issues, needs protection/enhancement, and forth to select and produce appropriate foundations for long term sustainable environmentally sound systems within the altered regime. 

Robbin Sotir consistently improves the standards for environmental solutions via designed and constructed projects, research, teaching, technical reviews, articles, publications and professional affiliations.  She is the ASTM Chair of Section D18-25.10 Soil Bioengineering.  In this role, she leads the development of standard practices for soil bioengineering technology that are referenced in engineering technical specifications worldwide.  She is the principal author of the USDA/ NRCS Engineering Field Handbook, Chapter 18 Soil Bioengineering for Upland Slope Protection and Erosion Control (1992) and rewrote Chapter 16 Streambank and Shoreline Protection (1996), to include soil bioengineering and fluvial geomorphic aspects.  Robbin has authored and co-authored/providing technical reviews on numerous soil bioengineering Technical Notes for the US Army Corps of Engineers – USAE Research and Development Center, Environmental Laboratory, at WES, Vicksburg, MS and completed in 2006 the technical guidelines.

 

http://www.sotir.com

 

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