Staff Interests and Projects

Below is a list of staff who make up the Environmental Modelling and Monitoring research group, their interests and some ongoing projects.

Steve Dowers - Geographical Information Science; GIS performance analysis; parallel processing; query language development. Development of portable parallel software algorithms for the analysis of geographical data. Supply demand analysis for sports facility provision (supported by the Sports Council and Scottish Sports Council). Development of map and aerial photograph cataloguing systems (supported by English Heritage).

Vicki Eachus - Planning data analysis

Dave Finnegan - Sports and planning data analysis; environmental modelling.

Professor Peter Furley - Tropical biogeography; tropical soils and land development; savanna and forest ecology in the New World tropics. Monitoring forest degradation and forest management. Remote sensing and GIS applications in tropical biogeography. Current projects: Soil micro-variation and tropical forest growth (supported by Natural History Museum). Savanna research in Zimbabwe (supported by EU). Biodiversity monitoring and assessment in Nepal (with UNEP-WCMC Cambridge; supported by the Darwin Trust). Paleo-environmental change in tropical lowlands, Belize (supported by Leverhulme Trust).

Bruce Gittings - Database management, performance and parallel computing issues related to GIS; environmental meta-databases; web-based GIS; web-enabled databases; web-based surveys. Using the web to portray the people and places of Scotland. Dynamic display of earthquake information using the web. Development of portable parallel software algorithms for the analysis of geographical data (supported by EPSRC). Gazetteer for Scotland (supported by RSGS, the Robertson Trust and SCRAN). Scottish Palaeoenvironmental Archive Database (supported by Historic Scotland). Scottish Wetlands Archaeological Database (with AOC Archaeology and Historic Scotland). Accessible GI metadata (with the Association for Geographic Information).

Dr. Bob Hodgart - Urban geography; locational modelling and spatial analysis; services. Restructuring health care and transport systems. Location-Allocation models and their application to services in the public sector.

Dr. Nick Hulton - Glacial modelling; glaciology; climate change; high performance computing; Geographical Information Science.

Izza Izzawati - The development of an interferometric model to assess the sensitivity of interferometric polarimetry for the retrieval of tree height. The use of a 3-D forest backscatter model to assess the sensitivity of multi-frequency, -polarisation and -angle Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data for monitoring forest/plantation growth. SAR applications for forest biomass retrieval.

Stewart Jamieson - Landscape evolution in the Antarctic and the Himalayas; GIS and digital elevation models.

Dr. William Mackaness - Geographical Information Science; visualisation; cartography. Visualisation and exploratory data analysis; derivation of multiple representations from single datasets; interface design in automated cartography. The role of GIS in land title claims in Australia (with Murdoch University, Perth). Socio-technological production of GIS knowledges (supported by ESRC).

Dr. Tim Malthus - Remote sensing; freshwater systems. Remote sensing for quantitative applications; high spectral resolution remote sensing; remote sensing of aquatic systems with emphasis on algal and macrophytic vegetation. Change detection in semi-natural vegetation. Remote sensing of leaks from aqueducts (NERC funded). Applications of high spatial resolution remote sensing.

Robin McLaren - Geographical Information Science: Policy and Project Management.

Dr. Patrick Meir - Ecosystem science; carbon-water relationship of plants and ecosystems; terrestrial carbon cycle; tropical forests. Most recently (2000-) I have obtained funding to support my work from :NERC,EU, The Royal Society, NSF, UNEP, FAO and through short contracts.

Dr. David Munro - Gazetteer for Scotland; Director of Royal Scottish Geographical Society

Dr. Anthony Newton - Pre- and post-Hispanic landscape change in Michoacan (Mexico); the impact of tephra layers on central Mexican lake systems; human-environment interactions in Iceland; tephrochronology (Iceland and Mexico); pumice in the North Atlantic region; web development and databases.

Chris Place - Integration of GIS and remote sensing for environmental and pollution modelling. Ammonia emission inventories (supported by ITE and MAFF). Defining water quality parameters from catchment characteristics (supported by IFE). Landscape analysis of the transport, transformation and fate of reactive nitrogen (NERC).

Dr. Neil Stuart - Geographical Information Science; hydrology. GIS supported methods to solve practical problems of land and water resource management. Use of GIS for mapping to support predictive modelling of crop pests (supported by MAFF). River catchment, and flood inundation modelling (supported by the Environment Agency). GIS applications for developing nations.

Professor David Sugden - Glacial and polar geomorphology; the polar regions. Antarctic ice sheet stability and modelling the dynamics of the Patagonian ice cap (supported by NERC).

Dr. Iain Woodhouse - Radar Remote Sensing; Polar Decomposition Methods for Visualising SAR Data; Novel Visualisation Techniques for the Analysis of Multichannel Remote Sensing Data; DEM Generation and Regional Scale Geomorphology; Synergistic Remote Sensing of Vegetation.