Research
Research
My research interests include climate, hydrology and vegetation processes and dynamics, and their interactions with each other, and with human activity, in Mediterranean and tropical humid environments. My research applies high-tech field monitoring and distributed process-based computer modelling along with
tethered and airborne photogrammetry , analysis of remote sensing data and
laboratory experimentation to achieve this. I am committed to science in the service of society and have thus focused (collaboratively with industrial partners) on making my research results available to industrial and policy-oriented users through decision support tools and web-based modelling tools and data distribution systems. My varied research interests are realised collaboratively with industry, international partners and a large group of PhD students and can be summarised:
(1) Semi-arid desertification and land degradation, incorporating:
The role of natural climate variability versus anthropic climate and land use change.
Modelling surface and subsurface controls on hydrology and vegetation dynamics.
The development of policy and decision support systems for the better understanding, prevention and/or mitigation of Mediterranean desertification in southern Europe and North Africa through a series of EU funded research projects including
MODULUS ,
MedAction ,
DESURVEY .
(2) The hydrology and ecophysiology of tropical montane cloud forests (TMCF), incorporating:
Laboratory and field determination of rainfall and fog interception by canopies and epiphytes.
Distributed monitoring and modelling of TMCF catchment hydrology and effects of landscape variability, climate and land use change. Modelling water production by montane and lowland forests and the viability of payments for Environmental Services (PES) schemes through projects such as the
FIESTA project and the
NERC ESPA Situation Analysis.
Pan-tropical assessment of
cloud forest distribution, hydrological services and conservation with a particular focus on the impacts of climate and land use change
Understanding the physiology of tropical montane cloud forest trees, in particular the role of light and leaf wetness in stunting their photosynthetic production
(3) Continental to global hydrological and ecological modelling, incorporating
Modelling climate, hydrology and vegetation change under current and future climates at the European scale
The development of pan-tropical climatologies for
rainfall and
cloud cover from satellite sources
The integration of these with various global scale datasets and process models for understanding the hydrological impacts of global land use and climate change, including the
CPWF Basin Focal Project , and a pantropical analysis of hydrological service provision to
dams
The delivery of these datasets to the global user community
(4) New technologies for rapid regional assessment of conservation priority in the tropics, incorporating
Spatial modelling and geodiversity-biodiversity relations from regional to national scales (with respect to trees and birds to date), through the
HERB project .
Assessment of diversity and conservation priority from manual and automated analysis of high-resolution imagery and photography of
forest canopies .
Environment-vegetation-diversity relationships in TMCF and lowland tropical rainforest
Regional to local scale modelling of environmental sensitivity to climate and land use change
Geospatial technologies for minimising the impacts of the Petroleum industry in the western Amazon,
Proyecto AMBIODUCTO
(5) Hydrological applications of ground penetrating radar, incorporating
GPR for the distributed parameterisation of subsurface properties in hydrological models.
GPR for soil moisture (and water leak) detection.