Research

Geomorphology is the main thing, drawing upon cosmogenic radionuclides and numerical modelling to quantify rates of erosion, transport and deposition in sedimentary environments. Key research themes are as follows:

✦ Cold landscapes

Glacial and postglacial processes in high mountain and high latitude environments, including deglaciation chronology, cryogenic soil processes, glacioisostasy and fluvial-glacial interactions. Nowadays my focus is on reconstructing and understanding Earth's earliest Plio-Pleistocene ice sheets.

Glacially eroded plateau surfaces above 1400m, Jotunheimen, S-Norway.

✦ River processes & dynamics

Rivers and the evolution of landscapes, including bedrock incision, sediment transport-deposition and the role of channel vegetation in river behaviour. My research began with fluvial geomorphology, and rivers remain a core interest.

Wet Season river surveying & bedload gauging in Magela Ck, N-Australia.

✦ Extreme geological events
Processes and products of rare, high-magnitude floods triggered by extreme rainfall or collapse of ice-dammed lakes. Understanding the magnitude and frequency of events that shape Earth's surface is central to geomorphology.

Suspended-load gravel in giant-flood bar, Vitim River, Siberia.

✦ Desert environments

Erosion and sediment transport processes in drylands and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction via river, lake and dune proxies. I love dry stony places.

Palaeoshoreline excavation at Lake Callabonna, central Australia.

✦ Pleistocene archaeology

After first touching on archaeology during my PhD studies in central Australia, more recently I have applied luminescence and cosmo burial dating to sites of early human dispersal in Europe, Siberia, and the Levant.

Early Palaeolithic (Mode 1) stone artefacts excavated at Korolevo, western Ukraine.