Louise Slater

The magnitude and frequency of floods is changing rapidly in the context of both climate change and widespread anthropogenic shifts in land use and land cover.  The student will be part of an international research group that seeks to understand how changes in climate and land cover are altering hydroclimatic extremes and the morphology of river networks in different climates around the world. The details of any DPhil project would be defined in discussion with the student, but possible research topics include: detection and attribution of hydroclimatic changes (e.g. disentangling climatic versus land cover drivers); understanding and predicting how river channels and their networks adjust dynamically to shifting land cover and climate regimes; and developing new statistical, mathematical or machine learning approaches for better predicting major hydro-climatic events in the future. Research methodologies are likely to involve data-driven, computer-based analyses in hydrology, climate science, or fluvial geomorphology (or any combination of those disciplines) and may include data science techniques (with programming in R or Python), statistical modelling, machine learning, satellite remote sensing, data visualisation, and (if desired) field experiments in river catchments around the world.

Louise Slater is an Associate Professor in Physical Geography and a Fellow of Hertford.

PhD, University of St Andrews.