Academic staff 

Dr Nicholas Barrand is a glaciologist focusing on glacier mass balance, sea-level rise, and the role, importance, and future evolution of glaciers as water resources. His research group addresses these issues using a range of interdisciplinary approaches including field observations and measurements, numerical modelling, and optical and microwave remote sensing.

 

Rebecca is a biogeochemist, specialising in nutrient cycling and environmental change in modern and past environments. Her research focuses on the biogeochemistry of peats, soils and sediments during environmental disturbance; the subsurface microbial response to natural and anthropogenic changes in atmospheric sulphur deposition, temperature, storms and floods, mineral reactivity and chemical ...

Lesley Batty is a Reader in Ecological Education and brings her passion and expertise in the field to all aspects of her work. She has a particular interest in providing inclusive environments for learning and in working closely with employers to provide skills-led education. She is Head of Wellbeing and the Head of Employability and Placements for the School.

She has a particular interest in ...

Chris has been a lecturer in Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Birmingham from 1994 and became Senior Lecturer from 2007.

Dr. Liling Chang’s main research interest is to examine responses of terrestrial ecosystems to climate change, elevated atmospheric CO₂, and disturbance events (fires, droughts). Her research focuses on integrating field observations, remote sensing data, and process-based models to quantify and predict ecosystem water, energy, carbon fluxes, productivity, and demography.

Simon is an interdisciplinary lecturer in geography with broad research interests around human interactions with water and landscapes.  Much of his work focuses on “Anthropocene geomorphology” - unique landforms resulting from interactions between human activities and natural processes. Examples include how waste plastic is being incorporated into sediments and fluvial transport ...

Adriane Esquivel Muelbert investigates how forests respond to different global change forces and what the implications of these responses are on biodiversity and global biogeochemical cycles. Her work demonstrates the importance of drought tolerance in shaping diversity and composition across Neotropical tree communities and provides evidence that Amazonian forests are changing as a ...

Ian Fairchild is a geoscientist with broad interests in the geochemistry of the Earth’s surface, climate change and Quaternary and Neoproterozoic earth history. He employs this breadth of knowledge in research and public outreach including geoconservation in the West Midlands. He is equally at home in the field and the laboratory with a wealth of experience in glacial ...

Professor Gauci investigates how the biosphere interacts with the atmosphere and he explores questions relating to how these interactions respond to various drivers of global change.

Laura Graham is a computational and spatial ecologist interested in understanding how anthropogenic changes such as climate and land-use change affect global ecosystems, and how this in turn affects human well-being. Read more about Laura’s research at laurajanegraham.github.io. 

Laura is currently working on the IIASA-NERC funded fellowship A complex-systems approach to improve ...

Dr Hamilton is a soil scientist, specialising in biogeochemical cycling of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus in forest environments. Her research focuses on the changes to microbial nutrient cycling in soils as a response to climate change, pollution and land use change. Her work seeks to understand how we can manage soils to ensure future resilience to disturbance and how we might use nature-based ...

Dr Shasha Han is an Assistant Professor in Physical Geography (Hydrology and Water Resources) in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES) at the University of Birmingham (UoB). Her research mainly focuses on two interlinked themes: 1) Improving probabilistic flood forecasts and floodplain mapping using advanced techniques; and 2) Investigating changes in floods over time ...

David is a physical geographer with interdisciplinary research interests focusing on three complementary themes within hydroclimatology (interface between hydrology-climatology): (1) hydroclimatological processes within alpine, Arctic, mountain and glacierized river basins; (2) climate and river flow regimes; and (3) river energy budget and water temperaturedynamics. He has cross-cutting ...

Dr Nick Kettridge specializes in characterizing the ecohydrological resilience of ecosystems to both natural and anthropogenic disturbance. Much of his research focuses on peatlands; understanding the processes that control the provision of key ecosystem services within these environments, and quantifying their response to changing climatic conditions and extreme events such as fire and drought.

Kieran is an environmental scientist with a particular interest in freshwater ecosystems. His research can be divided into two main areas: (1) elucidating the impacts of global change (climate change, land use change and drought) on river ecosystems; and, (2) improving understanding of water quality and biogeochemistry of human modified river catchments (agricultural, urban), with a focus on ...

Professor Dr Stefan Krause is Professor of Ecohydrology and Biogeochemistry in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences. His interdisciplinary research group on coupled groundwater and surface water systems investigates the multifaceted impacts of global environmental change on hydrological fluxes, biogeochemical cycling and contaminant transport, and ecohydrological ...

Dr Joshua Larsen is a Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography. His research interests include:  Hydrology, ecohydrology, biogeochemistry, water quality, and palaeohydrology.

Mark is an ecologist researching environmental change in freshwaters. His research group is focused on understanding how environmental stressors and climate change, especially extreme climatic events such as floods, droughts and heat waves, affect the structure and functioning of aquatic ecosystems. His group works empirically across a range of spatial and temporal scales, from laboratory ...

Tom Matthews is a Senior Research Fellow who researches global environmental change issues using macroecological, macroevolutionary and biogeographical approaches. He applies a mixture of theoretical and empirical methods to investigate various macroecological topics. He has a keen interest in island systems and birds, and has published two recent books on species–area relationships ...

Professor Alexander Milner has been at the University of Birmingham for 15 years, where he was initially responsible for setting up the Environmental Science and Environmental Management degrees. He is now responsible for the Masters degree in River Environmental Management. His research involves river ecosystems in alpine and Arctic environments and has long term studies in Glacier Bay ...

Ian Phillips is best known for writing the most comprehensive account of the 1973 Isle of Man Summerland fire disaster, which can be obtained by going to summerlandfiredisaster.co.uk. He gained his BSc Geography degree from the University of Birmingham in 1995, before continuing at the University to complete an MSc in Meteorology and Climatology and a PhD in Geography. Ian has been ...

Tom Pugh is a scientist interested in interactions and feedbacks between the terrestrial biosphere and the global climate system, which he primarily investigates using computer models and big data synthesis. Read more about Tom's research at bioatmo.wordpress.com.

Arnald Puy focuses on understanding and appraising uncertainties in contentious phenomena, especially those related with agriculture, climate and water resources. His research aims at providing insights for sustainability and makes use of mathematical models, uncertainty and sensitivity analysis, post-normal science and ethics of quantification.

Jon Sadler is a biogeographer and ecologist whose research focuses on species population and assemblage dynamics in animals (sometimes plants). His work is highly interdisciplinary, bisecting biogeography, ecology, urban design, riparian management and island Biogeography. It uses approaches that combine detailed field studies, field and laboratory experimentation, sometimes with social science ...

Professor Sambrook Smith investigates the linkages between river processes and sedimentology at scales ranging from individual pores within a river bed up to km-long bars in large rivers.

The World’s largest rivers suffer from a paucity of knowledge about how they currently function, how they have evolved through time and how they may respond to future environmental changes. This lack of ...

Dr Sami Ullah’s research is mainly focused on the biogeochemistry of nitrogen and its linkages to carbon and phosphorus cycling under global change in soils under forest, peatland/wetland, grassland, and agricultural crops. The impetus of his research is to advance mechanistic understanding of the response of key microbial functions such as denitrification, nitrogen and carbon ...

Dr Martin Widmann is a climate scientist. His current main research area is regional climate change, in particular the development and validation of statistical downscaling methods. He also studies past climates; the main activity in this field is the development of data assimilation methods to combine climate simulations with empirical knowledge from proxy data.