Tarick Abu-Aly leads Balance’s Bay Area restoration design practice. He believes that thoughtful planning and environmentally conscious design can restore health, function, and resiliency to impaired ecosystems while simultaneously enhancing public health and safety. Tarick is a civil engineer by training with a diverse background in geomorphology, river hydraulics, and stream ecology. After completing his master’s degree at UC Davis with a thesis on hydraulic modeling of the Lower Yuba River, he moved on to consulting where he has spent the past 12+ years refining his understanding of natural channel processes and implementing a wide variety of stream and wetland restoration designs. Throughout his career he has assisted government agencies with large-scale, multi-year restoration efforts as well as helped private landowners repair storm damage with innovative bio-engineered bank protection designs. 

His creative and flexible approach to problem solving has enabled him to achieve consensus among interested parties and bring numerous challenging and complex projects to completion. By using state of the art modeling tools to tell a visual and compelling story, Tarick conveys detailed technical information to a non-technical audience in a manner that clearly communicates the project constraints and benefits. His thorough knowledge of regulatory permitting requirements enables him to streamline the permitting process by presenting designs that provide meaningful environmental benefits while also protecting critical infrastructure.  

Tarick considers fieldwork to be a critical component of his job. By observing natural processes at work, he is able to present designs that are tailored to a specific hydrologic setting rather than following a one-size-fits-all approach. His field experience includes directing aerial mapping and remote sensing data collection efforts using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), as well as conventional topographic and bathymetric data collection. 

  • California P.E. C81992
  • M.S. Civil and Environmental Engineering, Water Resources at University of California Davis, 2012
  • B.S., Bachelor of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of California Davis, 2009
  • Coyote Creek Cross Valley Pipeline Extension Outfall Design, Valley Water, Santa Clara County, California
  • Carmel River Floodplain Restoration and Environmental Enhancement Project (CRFREE), Big Sur Land Trust, Monterey County, California
  • Stevens Creek Bank Restoration Phase 3, City of Cupertino, Santa Clara County, California

Abu-Aly, T.R., et al., Effects of LiDAR-derived, spatially distributed vegetation roughness on two-dimensional hydraulics in a gravel-cobble river at flo…, Geomorphology (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2013.10.017 Key Words

Working with a team of passionate, smart people to solve complex environmental problems that often have no obvious solution.

Traveling off the beaten path, backpacking in the Sierras, honing my amateur chef skills, learning new languages, and playing pick-up rugby at the local park.

Traveling to a remote corner of the world and learning about unique cultures.