Owen Ryerson

Technical Staff Scientist

Born and raised in Cambridge, Mass., the son of an artist and teacher, Owen fell into a high school internship with a coastal geomorphology professor at Boston University that spurred him to thinking about the processes that shape landscapes and how human development impacts those processes. He went on to the University of Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he completed a BA in Geology with a minor in Geography. Enthusiastic for adventure, his field experience has included a three-week backcountry field expedition to collect 25 pounds of rock samples (by backpack) 100 miles from any road in Alaska’s Gates of The Arctic National Park; working as a Stream Hydrology and Riparian Ecology Technician in Eastern Oregon for The Great Basin Institute; and mapping fluvial deposits and collecting stream sediment samples in California and Oregon for cosmogenic dating to determine long term erosion rates.

He joined Inter-Fluve in 2022. An excellent writer and savvy with GIS, Owen has been assisting in report writing, creating maps, data analysis, and will no doubt be crisscrossing the West over the summer to survey, perform construction oversight and assist in geomorphic assessments. His appreciation for wild places goes beyond his work. An avid cyclist with an eagerness to visit wild places, Owen completed The Divide in 2020, a 2,745 mile bike route that follows the Continental Divide from Alberta, Canada to the US/Mexico border in New Mexico. New to Oregon, he’s taken up both backcountry snowboarding and white water kayaking of late.