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Research

My research focuses on understanding deposition of loess (geological wind-blown dust record), testing its spatial and temporal synchroneity at regional and continental scales. Insights gained from the past can help to determine what will be driving future landscape activation, and dust emissions, under progressively drier climates.

Loess as an archive of Quaternary change

This research theme focuses on using multi-proxy dataset supported by Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating to better understand landscape evolution during Quaternary. The questions central to this include ‘continuity’ and ‘uniformity’ of loess profiles regionally and continentally, and climate-loess connections. I am really interested in local and regional drivers of loess-sequence development.

Sediment Provenance

Sediment source, whether geomorphological (more immediate) or geological (the proto-source), can provide information about past landscapes and sediment transport including sediment production, atmospheric circulation, landscape evolution, and the wider dust cycle. To address provenance questions I apply sediment geochemistry techniques such as elemental composition of bulk sediment, isotopic composition, and single grain approaches. To date most of my research focused on U-Pb dating of detrital zircon and their hafnium content.

Dust transport, deposition, and fluxes

This final theme brings together two previous research themes to investigate links between loess and climate, using extensive and robust environmental data and to address questions of dust production, landscape activation, and the drivers of dust emission.

Research collaborations

Rachel Smedley

Luminescence dating of Quaternary sediments

Filip Duszyński

Wrocław University

Evolution of table mountains

Ian Millar

British Geological Survey

Geochemistry and provenance

Jacek Skurzyński

Wrocław University

Geochemistry of European loess

Simon Underdown

Oxford Brookes University

Loess of the Lower Danube

Daniel Veres

Romanian Academy Institute of Speleology

Loess of the Lower Danube