Research interest:

Predicting soil organic matter dynamics across a wide range of scales has become one of the most important research priorities for many soil and climate scientists to better understand and protect ecosystem services for future generations, including climate regulation, food productivity and flood protection. My research contributes to this emerging scientific question by making detailed assessments of the spatial and temporal behaviour of soil organic carbon (SOC) considering field, catchment, regional and national scales.

– Modelling climate change & land use change impacts on past & future SOC budgets at the national scale

– Investigating soil type, agro-management and erosion impacts on soil C input and mineralization.

– Assessing lateral fluxes of organic matter and sediments across the terrestrial aquatic continuum.

– Downscaling of large scale spatial distributions of SOC controlling climate variables, such as precipitation.

However, during recent years I have paid particular attention to link my expertise as regards SOC dynamics to key ecosystem services (e.g. climate regulation, food security, water quantity / quality) and identify associated synergies and trade-offs across the land-water interface. In that respect, I always keep a close eye on making use of the most up to date technologies (e.g. remote sensing using UAV and satellites) in order to obtain detailed spatially explicit assessments of soil and crop health degradation risks.

International collaboration:

  • China : Peking University
  • UK : Exeter University, Cranfield University
  • France:, INRA-Orleans (Infosol), CERFACS-Toulouse
  • The Netherlands: Utrecht University
  • Belgium: University of Leuven
  • Switzerland: Basel University

Funding :

CoI : NERC-Newton – Phase 2 (2019-2021): Maximising Impact by Decision Support Tools for sustainable soil and water through UK-China Critical Zone science, MIDST-CZ

CoI : NERC TaSe (2019 – 2020) Social-economic-environmental trade-offs in managing the Land-River-Interface

STARS – PhD studentship (2018-2021): Tracing the origin of sediments and C across the terrestrial–aquatic continuum: a holistic approach to assess climate change and water quality threats.

CoI : Soil-Agria PhD studentship (2017-2020): Providing Satellite-based soils and crop productivity indicator maps for on-farm management.

CoI : NERC-Newton – Phase 1 (2016 – 2018) Using Critical Zone Science to understand sustaining the ecosystem service of Soil and Water: Soil Processes and Ecological Services in the Karst Critical Zone of Southwest China (SPECTRA), Work Package Leader

PI : SDF-project (2015) Investigating C and sediment fluxes across the terrestrial aquatic continuum at the catchment scale

PI : NERC-REP (2015) Linking the terrestrial and aquatic carbon cycles to improve global Earth Systems Models

King Abdulaziz University / Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia (London) PhD Scholarship (2015-2019) : Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Dust Storms in Saudi Arabia and Associated Impacts, Using Geographic Information systems and Remote Sensing

PI : Marie Curie Intra European Postdoc Fellowship (2013-2014) Studying the 3D dynamic evolution of soil organic carbon driven by erosion and land use changes at the landscape scale – D3DC

PI : Flemish Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT) (2005-2008) PhD Fellowship: Studying the spatial and temporal variability of Soil Organic Carbon at the regional scale