Staff research interests

	Dr Kate Arnold Kathryn’s research is investigating the effects of nutrition and pollution on the behaviour, physiology and reproductive success of vertebrates. Kathryn joined the department in April 2010 from the Division of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Glasgow. Kathryn holds a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in evolutionary biology. Prior to that, she held research positions at the University of Glasgow and University of Queensland.
	Professor Mike Ashmore Mike joined the Department in October 2004, from being Head of Environmental Science at the University of Bradford. He has published extensively in several areas of pollution-effects research. His particular interests include: impacts of ozone and of nitrogen deposition on vegetation communities; assessment of personal exposure to air pollution; development of risk assessment for metals; impacts of air pollution in developing countries; impacts of urban air pollution on health. He has served on many committees, for example the UN/ECE Integrated Co-operative Committee on Vegetation; UK DETR National Expert Group on Trans-boundary Air Pollution; UK DOE Photo-oxidant Review Group and Critical Loads Advisory Group; UK Department of Health Advisory Group on Medical Aspects of Air Pollution Episodes. He was a consultant to the WHO on revised air quality guidelines for Europe.
	Dr Bryce Beukers-Stewart Bryce joined the Department from the Marine Conservation Society and the University of Liverpool in October 2007. He is a marine ecologist and fisheries biologist with particular interests in the ecology of coral reef fishes, the management of fisheries and the effects of climate change on marine communities. Much of his research over the last decade has focused on the utility of predictive models, marine protected areas and stock enhancement for improving the management of scallop fisheries. He is also active in promoting the sale and consumption of sustainable seafood and examining the effect of this practice on the management of fisheries. He has published widely in scientific journals and also disseminates his research to a broader audience through the media and popular articles. Bryce is a scientific adviser to the UK National Scallop Group and a member of the Defra Marine Fisheries Science Advisory Group.
	Dr. Alistair Boxall Alistair was formerly Head of Centre, Non-Agricultural Chemicals, Cranfield Centre for Eco-Chemistry. His particular research interests include the environmental fate, behaviour and effects of chemicals (especially pesticides, biocides and veterinary medicines), and development of risk assessment protocols for these groups of compounds. His research group is based at the exceptionally well equipped laboratories of the Central Science Laboratory, Sand Hutton, a few km outside York. He works in close collaboration with Professor Colin Brown.
	Professor Colin Brown Colin was formerly Joint Head of Cranfield Centre for Eco-Chemistry. His particular research interests include monitoring and modelling the environmental fate, behaviour and effects of agro-chemicals, especially pesticides, and pest management protocols, and he has published extensively in these areas. His research group is based alongside Alistair’s at the well-equipped organic analysis laboratories of the Central Science Laboratory, Sand Hutton, just outside York. He works in close collaboration with Alistair Boxall. He is a member of the Environmental Panel of the Advisory Group on Pesticides.
	Dr Nicola Carslaw Nicola is an atmospheric chemist specialising in the development and utilisation of models to gain insight into the chemistry of air pollution, both indoors and out. Her research has involved participating in field campaigns that aimed to study the clean background atmosphere at locations such as Cape Grim, Tasmania, and Mace Head on the west coast of Ireland. More recently, field campaigns in Ascot, Surrey, Birmingham and outer London have given insight into the more complex chemistry that occurs in urban areas. The models are used to make predictions of various atmospheric constituents that can be compared with field measurements. The models can also be used to yield information about the detailed chemical reactions that occur in the atmosphere, reactions that underpin urban pollution, global warming, acid deposition and stratospheric ozone loss. In the indoor environment, it is possible to use detailed chemical models to predict which pollutants may reach significant concentrations indoors and hence be potentially harmful to human health.
	Professor Malcolm Cresser Malcolm is an environmental scientist with particular interests in modelling spatial and temporal variations in river water chemical quality for catchment management purposes, biogeochemical cycling of nutrient elements (especially nitrogen, and particularly in the context of long-term soil sustainability and environmental protection), validity of the use of nitrate vulnerable zones by policy makers, quantifying effects of atmospheric and soil pollution on the functioning of soil/plant/water systems, especially in UK uplands, and science-based archaeology. His research is highly interdisciplinary, and as a consequence he is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Society of Biology. He has written nine books and more than 320 research papers, serves on the editorial boards of a number of journals, including the Science of the Total Environment and Chemistry and Ecology, and has served on a number of DOE/DETR (now DEFRA) advisory groups and national and international Research Council committees and visiting groups.
	Dr Pierre Delmelle Pierre joined Environment in autumn 2005 from his previous post in charge of the Environmental Health Group at the Government Institut Scientifique de Service Public, Belgium. Initially trained in bioengineering, agronomy and the environment, and later in geochemistry, he then spent significant periods at the Institute for Study of the Earth's Interior in Japan and at the Université de Montréal in Canada, where he became particularly interested in the impacts of volcanic eruptions. Pierre therefore has published extensively on the impacts of volcanic emissions on the atmosphere and on soils in the vicinity of major volcanoes. His specific research interests include health risk assessment and management, quantification of air pollution exposure, and characterisation of atmospheric particulates in relation to their environmental and health effects.
	Melf Ehlers In my PhD dissertation I am examining the complex processes of change, adaptation and path-dependencies in ecological, technological and economic realms at the regional level of Germany’s emerging biogas (anaerobic digestion) sector. The topic relates to more general questions of renewable energy deployment and socio-ecological implications of transitions in energy provisioning. To address such issues theoretically, I am using evolutionary and institutional economics, entrepreneurship and environmental governance approaches. The empirical approaches rest on qualitative case study methods. But I have also used quantitative methods and modelling techniques to examine agri-environmental schemes and energy balances of farming systems. An additional area, I am interested in, are practices and values of sustainability researchers. In this topical area, I empirically investigated interdisciplinarity and science-society interfaces, but also the role of attitudes towards technology in teaching and research. My more consultancy oriented research focused on economic evaluation of water policies, such as the EU Water Framework Directive.
	Dr Lisa Emberson Lisa has enjoyed a joint appointment with the Environment Dept. since Oct 2000; she is also a senior research fellow in the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), an institute affiliated to the Biology Dept. at York. Lisa performs research in the field of air pollution focussing on the effects of ground level ozone (O₃) and other air pollutants on agricultural yields, nutritive quality and food security, forest productivity and the functioning of terrestrial semi-natural ecosystems. This work is conducted across the globe but with a focus in south Asia, southern Africa and Europe. The work concentrates on modelling the physical impacts resulting from air pollution and incorporates socio-economic impact assessments to ensure policy options consider both larger (national, international) scale economic impacts and the local scale livelihood vulnerability impacts. Lisa also retains an active research role in Europe, developing risk assessment methodologies for use within the UNECE LRTAP Convention to develop critical levels for ground level O₃ in relation to vegetation. This research focuses on developing methods to estimate both the total deposition and stomatal deposition of tropospheric O3 using flux based risk assessments as a policy tool across Europe. This European work provides a platform for capacity building through transferring knowledge and methodologies developed in North America and Europe to developing country regions (e.g. south Asia and southern Africa).
	Dr Julie Hawkins Since the late 1980s, Julie's research has been focused on studying human impacts on marine ecosystems and how to reduce the problems these create. For the last eleven years her work has primarily been on the impacts of fishing and how marine protected areas can help rectify the failings of other forms of fishery management. This has included work on extinction risk in the sea and how necessary it is to protect areas of the sea from fishing. She has shown that complete protection for some areas of the sea is totally justified on conservation grounds and her work provided the first proof that protection from fishing can increase catches in surrounding fisheries. Over the years her work on the effects of recreational scuba diving on coral reefs has moved from firstly playing a major role in getting the issue to be recognised, to then seeing it become addressed throughout the tropics. The majority of Julie’s field work has taken place in the Caribbean and Middle East.
	Dr Rob Marchant Rob Marchant’s research focuses on unravelling ecosystem dynamics, in particular the interaction ecosystems, climate change, human interaction and ecosystem function. Rob uses palaecological, ecological modelling, archaeological and biogeographical tools to determine the role of past events in shaping the present day composition of ecosystems. Understanding how ecosystems have changed in the past allows us to determine how ecosystem composition will change in the future. Crucial for using such information to manage the impacts of future predicted change is an assessment on the value of tropical ecosystems and how they sustain human livelihoods and well-being – areas central to Rob’s research. Rob works extensively in the tropics, in particular East Africa where areas of high biodiversity interact closely with socio-economic issues concerning past changes and future management. Rob has active projects in a range of different environments and ecosystems - from the high altitudes of Kilimanjaro to the mangrove forests of Zanzibar.
	Dr Colin J. McClean Colin is a geographer specialising in the application of geographical information systems (GIS) to the analysis of environmental problems. His current research interests include: spatially modelling the effects of climate change on plants in the UK and Africa; spatial modelling and mapping of biodiversity for conservation aims (terrestrial and marine); the use of high resolution environmental data sets for environmental valuation; mapping and modelling land use patterns; the varied uses of digital elevation models for geomorphological, hydrological, ecological and environmental economic applications.
	Professor David Raffaelli Dave has broad research interests in community and ecosystem ecology, in terrestrial, marine and freshwater systems. These include biodiversity and ecosystem function; inter-disciplinary approaches to environmental management; ecosystem health; marine food web dynamics; the relationships between catchment land-use, water quality and impacts on coastal receiving systems; applying manipulative field experiments to large-scale conservation and management issues; and issues of communication in environmental debate. He sits on the NERC college, and has acted in an advisory capacity to the Scottish Executive and other national bodies on a range of environmental issues. He has served on a number of UK Research Council and international research committees and is a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of UKPopNet, a major NERC initiative aimed at placing population ecology within the context of landscape change and sustainability. He is chair of bioSUSTAINABILITY, a core project, of DIVERSITAS (www.diversitas-international.org/), a major international programme on the causes and consequences of biodiversity change. He has also worked extensively within UKBRAG to produce policy recommendations on ecosystem functioning and services as well as the need for socio-economic approaches to biodiversity management.
	Dr David Rippin David was an RC-UK (Research Councils of the United Kingdom) Academic Fellow at the University of Hull Geography Department before coming to York in 2010. His research interests are focussed on the controls on the dynamics of glaciers and ice-sheets, and the use of ground-based and airborne radio-echo sounding (RES) techniques in exploring englacial and subglacial environments. He is also increasingly interested in supraglacial environments – specifically the role of supraglacial debris on energy and mass balance (and the use of remote techniques for assessing debris thickness) and the role of surface water on energy balance. He is editor of the Journal of Glaciology.
	Dr Murray Rudd Murray's research involves assessing the economic costs and benefits of human activities and government policies that affect natural capital and the provision of ecosystem services that impact human well-being. It explores issues of when, where, and how to invest scarce societal resources to achieve ecological and socio-economic sustainability. From a disciplinary perspective, Murray works at the intersection of environmental economics, political science (institutions and institutional analysis), public policy, and conservation social science. From a methodological perspective, he has particular interests in discrete choice modelling, latent class analysis, and issues of internet-based survey design and analysis. He is also increasingly focusing on robust decision making (RDM) approaches to quantitative policy analysis, its linkages to pragmatist philosophy and institutional economics, and the potential for participatory modelling of policy choices in the face of fundamental ecological and social uncertainty.
	Professor Callum M Roberts Callum is a marine conservation biologist with very broad research interests. He is best known for his work on marine reserves, areas that are off limits to all fishing. He has written widely on reserves including theoretical design issues, empirical studies of performance and implementation of management. He has supervised PhD students on many subjects, including artisanal fishery management, historical ecology of the sea, whale shark population dynamics and migration, juvenile coral ecology, coral-algal dynamics, economics of marine reserves and management of scuba diver and snorkeller impacts on coral reefs, and design of marine reserve networks. His own fieldwork has mostly involved fish on coral reefs. Callum also studies fisheries management, deep-sea conservation, marine biodiversity distribution and extinction risk in the sea. He has recently completed a book on the history of exploitation of the sea, from 1000AD to the present.
	Dr Katherine Selby Katherine is a Quaternary Scientist and Physical Geographer specialising in coastal environments. She is particularly interested in the reconstruction of past sea levels and has worked extensively in the North and West of Scotland, Newfoundland and more recently East Africa. Katherine uses two techniques, diatom and pollen analyses, to establish how sea levels have fluctuated and has also used these in lacustrine environments to establish lake level, pH and trophic status changes. Combined with Katherine's sea level research, she also investigates how the associated changing coastal configuration may have affected cultural development, including settlement patterns and utilisation of marine resources.
	Dr Piran White Piran’s research is focused in two principal areas: (1) wildlife ecology, conservation and management; and (2) biodiversity, ecosystem function and ecosystem services. Much of this work involves the use of interdisciplinary approaches alongside more traditional ecological research. He has held visiting research posts at New South Wales Agriculture (Orange, Australia), AgResearch (Lincoln, New Zealand) and the University of Waikato (Hamilton, New Zealand). He is Editor of Wildlife Research journal, and was formerly an Associate Editor of Journal of Animal Ecology. He has served on research assessment panels for the ESRC and NERC. His work on wildlife disease has included projects in Australia, New Zealand and continental Europe and he leads the University of York's involvement in the Australian-based Co-operative Research Centre on Invasive Animals. He has carried out research on ecosystem services as part of Defra’s Ecosystem Services project, which contributed directly to the development of Defra strategy in this area.

Environment

Staff research interests