Postgraduate research

Physical Geography and GIS

Environmental Processes and Change

Professor Heiko Balzter

  • Methods for forest monitoring (tree diseases, biomass, deforestation and degradation) from satellites
  • Cloud computing methods for processing Earth observation data
  • Assessing ecosystem services of landscapes with satellite data

Dr Juan Carlos Berrio

  • Palaeoecology of tropical ecosystems
  • Environmental changes of the past
  • Quaternary Research

Dr Arnoud Boom

  • Palaeoclimate Neotropical environments
  • Palaeohydrology using Deuterium isotopes
  • Palaeoclimate of Southern Africa

Dr Andrew Carr

  • Leaf wax lipids as palaeoenvironmental proxies
  • African palaeoecology
  • Organic matter in desert biomes
  • Application of compound-specific stable isotopes
  • Luminescence dating
  • Landscape change during the Quaternary

Dr Jörg Kaduk

  • Impact of climate change on agriculture in Africa
  • Interactions between plans growth dynamics and land surface exchange (e.g. water fluxes) and climate
  • Response of tropical trees to climate change
  • Role of plant resource allocation in the carbon cycle

Dr Mark Powell

  • Sediment transport processes in gravel-bed rivers
  • In-stream transfer and cycling of sediment-associated nutrients and pollutants
  • Dryland river forms and processess

Dr Mick Whelan

  • Mathematical modelling of nitrogen and phosphorus dynamics in soil and water
  • Nitrous oxide emissions from upland pastures
  • Long-term effects of land use change and agricultural practices in nutrient transfers from land to water

Forest and Peatlands

Professor Heiko Balzter

  • Methods for forest monitoring (tree diseases, biomass, deforestation and degradation) from satellites
  • Cloud computing methods for processing Earth observation data
  • Assessing ecosystem services of landscapes with satellite data

Dr Kirsten Barrett

  • Pan-boreal wildfire recovery dynamics
  • Carbon cycle feedbacks from boreal wildfires
  • Rapid ecological shifts as a function of wildfire disturbance

Dr Juan Carlos Berrio

  • Forest structure and biodiversity
  • Phenology and pollination
  • Distribution of plant species

Dr Arnoud Boom

  • Tropical tree ring stable isotopes
  • Peat geochemistry
  • Fate of organic matter in tropical forest ecosystems

Dr Jörg Kaduk

  • Methane exchange in wetlands - in particular fens
  • Impacts of land management on the greenhouse gas exchange of fens

Professor Susan Page

  • Impact of fire on tropical peatland ecosystem functions and recovery
  • Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from drained peatlands
  • Peatland restoration
  • Peatland ecosystem services and their valuation

Professor Kevin Tansey

  • Mapping vegetation fires at global and regional scales
  • Real-time methods to characterise disturbance of tropical peatlands using Earth Observation data
  • New methods for the use of Earth Observation data for Agri-tech applications

Dr Mick Whelan

  • Dissolved organic carbon
  • Tropical peat

GIScience Unit

Dr Stefano De Sabbata

  • Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), social media and user-generated content
  • Deep learning methods in GIScience
  • Digital geographies
  • Quantitative urban geography
  • Geographic Information Retrieval
  • Mobile and location-based services
  • Information visualisation

Dr Claire Jarvis

  • GIScience
  • Storyboards
  • The “twitterscape”
  • GPS tracking
  • Spatial literacy
  • Sensory GIS
  • Visualisation of networks
  • Spatial analysis
  • Visualisation (2D & 3D)
  • Mediascape

Dr Nicholas Tate

  • Surface characterisation and modelling of scale
  • Spatial data uncertainty and error
  • Pedagogic applications in GIS and data science

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