Kaisa Västilä

I research the flow of water and the transport of sediment and nutrients in rivers, streams and ditches, with a special focus on developing and assessing environmentally friendly solutions in river and agricultural water management. I am particularly interested in the complex interactions between flow, vegetation and riverine transport and retention processes.

I am currently working in my Academy Postdoctoral Research project entitled “Nature-based solutions for river engineering: coupling vegetation hydrodynamics with sedimentary nutrient processes (NBS-VEGE-NUTRI)” funded by the Academy of Finland (1 Sep 2020 – 31 August 2023). The project aims at improving the understanding on the nutrient retention and processing on man-made floodplains of compound (two-stage) channels, and on integrating findings of the laboratory and field studies into hydrodynamic modeling. The knowledge produced supports the optimal design and maintenance of sustainable river engineering solutions.

My current main international collaborators include Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology, University of Sheffield, Deltares, Institute of Geophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and Warsaw University of Life Sciences.

My current main national collaborators are University of Helsinki and the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), including the Samassa vedessä and Valumavesi projects.

Please, check my Aalto People site for information on past activities: https://people.aalto.fi/kaisa.vastila