Physical Geography and Earth Science PhD Opportunities

Primary Supervisor –  Dr Sarah Davies                     

• Late-glacial and Holocene environmental change recorded in lake sediments from upland Wales                             

Primary Supervisor – Professor Geoff Duller

• Developing luminescence methods for dating basalts from Earth suitable for application to robotic exploration of Mars

Primary Supervisor – Professor John Grattan

• Finding the First Factories: Archaeological remote sensing in Jordan through integration of radar and hyperspectral data     

Primary Supervisor – Professor Helen Roberts

• Luminescence chronologies for lacustrine sedimentary records from East Africa
• The application of luminescence dating to marine terrace sediments from California and Oregon, USA                           
• Extending the age range for luminescence dating of loess    

Primary Supervisor - Professor Andrew Thomas

• Projects concerning soils, carbon, carbon dioxide emissions, drylands, and wetlands in drylands.

 

Primary Supervisor - Dr Tom Holt

• A multi-temporal inventory of Greenland’s independent ice caps and stand-alone glaciers
• Glacier structure and debris evolution in a warming climate
• Debris transport in receeding glaciers and implications for future melt

Plus projects relating to remote sensing in glaciology - contact Tom for informal discussions. 

Primary Supervisor – Professor Bryn Hubbard                

• Fieldwork-based:
  Borehole-based investigations of englacial structure and processes at a temperate glacier
• Remote sensing-based: 
  Remote sensing of the dynamics of outlet glaciers of the Greenland Ice Sheet
  The structure of valley glaciers on Mars                                   

Primary Supervisor - Dr Tristram Irvine-Fynn

• Exploring the eco-hydrology of glacier surfaces
• Supraglacial ice characteristics retrieved from remote sensing techniques

           

 Primary Supervisor - Dr Marie Busfield

• Sedimentology and micromorphology of ancient glacial successions: Palaeoproterozoic, Cryogenian, Ordovician, Late Palaeozoic Ice Age, Pleistocene

 

Primary Supervisor - Dr Peter Bunting 

• Projects involving the development of new and improved methods / techniques for analysing Earth Observation imagery – optical and/or SAR. For example, image segmentation, texture analysis, contextual classification, classification techniques (e.g., machine learning, deep learning). This work would enhance our RSGISLib (http://www.rsgislib.org) software.
• Projects investigating methods of improving the generation of analysis ready optical data (ARD). For example, atmospheric correction and cloud masking. This will enhance our ARCSI (http://www.rsgislib.org/arcsi) software.
• Projects looking to automated the process of updating of land cover (i.e., change detection) mapping at large geographic scales (i.e., national, continental and global) using high resolution (Landsat, Sentinel 1 and 2) data.
• Remote sensing of changes in mangrove forests at any scale.
• Classification of very high resolution (i.e., UAV/drone imagery < 10cm resolution) to automatically retrieve broad land cover information. Might involve texture analysis and/or deep learning methods of classification.
   

Primary Supervisor - Dr Andy Hardy

• Mapping malarial mosquito habitats using Earth Observation

 

 

Earth Surface Processes Research Group

Primary Superisor - Professor Andrew Thomas

• Soil degradation, soil carbon, soil carbon dioxide emissions, impacts of grazing in a variety of temperate environments.
• Woodlands, carbon accounting, soil micro-climates, hydrology (with Hywel Griffiths, Stephen Tooth and Paul Brewer).
• Dryland soils, degradation, carbon, and wetlands in drylands – particularly in Spain, Botswana and Namibia (with Stephen Tooth).

Primary Supervisor – Professor Paul Brewer 

• Mining impacts on river systems.
• Application of hyperspectral remote sensing to the detection and assessment metal-contaminated floodplains.
• Spatial and temporal changes in river channel instability.                                        

Primary Supervisory - Dr Hywel Griffiths

• Historical and contemporary catchment-scale dynamics and geomorphological influence of large woody debris
• Understanding river channel change dynamics in Patagonian river systems using remote sensing and GIS
• Assessing rates and patterns of sediment supply to Llyn Tegid, North Wales.
• Interdisciplinary approaches to flood hazard assessment in dryland rivers systems (e.g. in Jordan, Patagonia)
• Impacts of woodland restoration on hydrological processes and soils (with Andrew Thomas & Paul Brewer).                                     

Primary Supervisor – Professor Stephen Tooth

• Divided in flow but united in denudation? Establishing the temporal development of mixed bedrock-alluvial anabranching rivers
• Wetlands in drylands as sociogeomorphological systems: an examination of the science-society-policy interface

 

Microbes and Earth Cluster

Primary Supervisory - Dr Andrew Mitchell

• Geochemical and biogeochemical aspects of carbon capture and storage – water, rock, microbe interactions.
• Microbially enhanced carbon capture and storage
• Microbially enhanced radionuclide and toxic metal pacification in groundwater and mine water
• Geomicrobiology and biogeochemistry in subglacial environments – Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine.
• Mineralogical controls on microbial communities in subglacial, groundwater and mine aqueous environments.