The University of Manchester

Faculty Member, Geography

Director of MSc in GIScience, Lecturer in Remote Sensing

About

Biography

I gained my BSc (Hons) in Marine Geography from the University of Cardiff in 1999. I then went on to gain an MSc in Environmental Conservation Management from the University of Glamorgan in 2000. This was followed by a PhD in the Department of Geography, University of Sheffield investigating the "potential of remote sesning as a tool for for the measurement of near-surface hydrological conditions in northern peatlands" , which was completed in 2004. I have been a Research Assistant at Sheffield (2004) and a Lecturer in Remote Sensing at the School of Geography, University of Southampton (2005-2010) and am currently a Lecturer in Remote Sensing at Manchester since Septemeber 2010.

General Research Interests

My research interests focus on the innovative application of remote sensing for monitoring the impact of environmental change on vegetation communities, and to improve our understanding of ecosystem physical processes, particularly in climatically sensitive northern peatland ecosystems.I am interested in the novel use of Earth observation data across a range of temporal and spatial scales which range from the collection of laboratory and in situ field spectroscopy data to the analysis of airborne and satellite imagery.


Previous and ongoing projects include:
 
The use of airborne remote sensing for provision of spatially-distributed estimates of peatland near-surface wetness

Peatlands contain vast amounts the world’s soil carbon and have a fundamental role in the terrestrial carbon cycle. Surface wetness, near-surface wetness and the position of the mean watertable are the primary factors controlling the rate at which atmospheric carbon gases are emitted from peatlands. Such data are key forcing variables in models of carbon balance processes. Current models rely heavily on small-scale point based data extrapolated over large areas, although such highly detailed data do not provide the spatial coverage necessary to characterise hydrological conditions across entire peatland complexes. As a consequence, important variations in peatland microtopography, and thus variability in the water-table position, are often unaccounted for.


Photosynthetic processes in northern peatlands: Potential responses to hydrological change

Despite Sphagnum being the dominant plant in many northern peatlands, our knowledge of Sphagnum ecophysiology is limited. The exact relationship between moisture conditions and crucially, the photosynthetic efficiency of Sphagnum remains unclear. Work has shown how remote sensing can be used to understand the photosynthetic status of peatland complexes, thus providing invaluable information regarding the carbon fluxes in these environments and improving our detection of ecosystem responses to climate or anthropogenic change.

 
Scaling peatland carbon fluxes using remote sensing data

Peatland carbon gas exchanges respond in a non-linear manner to spatial and temporal variations in key driving variables such as water table and temperature, which in turn are influenced by microtopography, the spatial arrangement of microtopographic features and vegetation composition. However, using RS to capture these small-scale peatland spatial heterogeneities at the coarser scales required to effectively up-scale carbon flux models is challenging. This work investigates ways in which RS can be used to scale peatland carbon flux estimations.

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