The Environmental Dynamics research group is a multi-disciplinary research team comprising eleven academic staff (including 1 RCUK and 2 NERC Fellows), six postdoctoral researchers, five technicians and a project administrator. Our common aim is to provide leadership in key aspects of contemporary environmental dynamics and global change. Research foci include (1) characterising environmental variability throughout the Quaternary (climatic change, biogeochemical cycling, and ecosystem vulnerability); and (2) investigating interactions between climatic change, human disturbance, and land-surface processes. Our research focuses on regions especially sensitive to environmental change such as high-latitude, alpine and fire-prone) and those with sparse environmental archives (tropics) to reduce uncertainty in modelled future-change scenarios and advance understanding of the Earth system. Our approaches involve field investigations with sampling sites on all continents and the application of state-of-the-art laboratory analytical approaches.

Key areas of research include:

• advancing the application of stable isotopes in tree rings as indicators of climate/environmental change
• the application of compound-specific isotopes, notably in lake sediments, and biogeochemical cycling of silicon isotopes
• determining the nature and timing of rapid climatic events using a multi-proxy approach including tephrochronology, biological methods, and radiocarbon and cosmogenic dating 
• quantification of effects of different wildfire regimes on soil organic carbon dynamics and on hydro-geomorphic responses in forested environments
• quantifying hydrological and erosional impacts and recovery following various logging practices in a rainforest environment
• elucidating the causes and environmental effects of soil hydrophobic behaviour including the development of tools for predicting its contribution to flood events

Members of the group lead the EC FP-VI Integrated Project Millennium, the Royal Society SE Asia Rainforest Research Programme, the QRA's Tephra in Quaternary Science (TIQS) Research Group, the cross-School Hydrophobicity Research Team and Interrogating trees as archives of environmental Sulphur variability.

Our research has also been funded by NERC, EPSRC, NSF, ESF and other major funding bodies. The group includes Editors in Chief for the international journals The Holocene and International Journal of Wildland Fire.

People

Siwan Davies (tephrochronology, ice-cores and sedimentary records, palaeoclimatology)

Stefan Doerr (wildfires, soil hydrology, karst geomorphology; Editor Int. J. Wildland Fire)

Mary Gagen (palaeoclimatology, climate change, stable isotope dendroclimatology)

Neil Loader (stable isotope palaeoclimatology, dendroclimatology)

John Matthews (physical geography of glacial forelands, Editor The Holocene)

Danny McCarroll (climate change, stable isotopes in tree rings, the last glaciation)

Geraint Owen (geology, sedimentary processes, facies analysis, palaeoenvironments)

Iain Robertson (dendrochronology, isotope chemistry; Assoc. Ed. Tree-ring Research)

Rick Shakesby (land degradation, wildfires, Quaternary environmentalchange)

Alayne Street-Perrott (biogeochemical cycles, palaeoenvironmental reconstruction)

Rory Walsh (hydrological processes, tropical rainforest management)

Shuying Cheng (soil water repellency, atomic force microscopy, polymer chemistry)

Kath Ficken (biogeochemistry, compound-specific isotopes, palaeoenvironments)

Glen Reynolds (Research Officer: SE Asia Rainforest Research Programme)

Emilia Urbanek (soil carbon, soil water repellency)

You can find out more information about joining us and studying for a PhD here.