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