Delighted to have received a British Society for Geomorphology Early Career Grant for a project entitled ‘To what extent have changes in river channel capacity contributed to flood hazard trends in England and Wales?’
Outline: Freshwater flood damages have increased dramatically over recent decades, and are of concern to millions of people living in flood-prone areas across the world. Most studies assume that trends in flood hazard are caused exclusively by changes in hydrology and climate. However, widespread anthropogenic influences to river systems have caused changes in the capacity of river channels, which can also modify flood hazard.
The aim of this project is to investigate how geomorphic changes in channel capacity have contributed to changing flood hazards, in comparison with hydro-climatic trends in the frequency of flood flows, in England and Wales. The grant will allow me to supplement data provided by the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales with field trips to obtain quantitative and qualitative channel characteristics to understand the causes of geomorphic change at each site; and to disseminate my work at the AGU Fall meeting in San Francisco, later this year.
Hydro-climate extremes, University of Oxford 