Dr Mark Grosvenor

Dr Mark Grosvenor is a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the King's Earth Observation and Wildfire (NCEO) research group. His research currently focuses on the setup and operation of the Fire Emissions Testing Chamber (FETCh) to allow the analysis of gas and particulate emissions from controlled experimental fires.

He previously worked at the University of Exeter wildFIRE Lab, where he managed the lab alongside undertaking fire ecology research as part of a European Research Council (ERC)-funded project.

His background is in palaeoenvironmental studies, in particular, the identification of human impact upon past landscapes. During his PhD with the Department of Geography at the University of Exeter, he focused on the analysis of pollen and charcoal preserved in lake sediments to identify changes to the vegetation structure of the English Lake District during the Mesolithic and Neolithic.

Mark has a wide range of laboratory and fieldwork skills. His field experience has ranged from lake sediment coring in China to controlled forest fires in the USA. In the laboratory, Mark has a very broad range of skills including flammability testing of natural fuels, acid-processing of rock/sediment samples, and microscopic analysis.

Research

Mark’s research interests have developed through his postgraduate, technical, and research positions and include reconstruction of past environments (mostly through analysis of lake sediments) and more recently contemporary wildfires. 

He is particularly interested in reconstructions of past fire activity and the impact they have upon the landscape. Mark has used a wide range of proxy techniques including analysis of pollen, charcoal, chironomids, sediment geochemistry (including Carbon Nitrogen analysis, and scanning x-ray fluorescence), and radiocarbon dating.

Further details

See Mark's research profile