Angela Gurnell

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Angela Gurnell
Alma mater University of Exeter
Scientific career
Institutions University of Southampton
University of Birmingham
King’s College London
Queen Mary University of London

Angela Gurnell is a British geoscientist who is Professor of Physical Geography at Queen Mary University of London. Her research considers hydrology, geomorphology and plant ecology. She is particularly interested in how vegetations and fluvial processes interact, and developing novel methodologies to monitor and assess rivers. She was awarded the Royal Geographical Society Victoria Medal in 2002 and the European Geosciences Union Alfred Wegener medal in 2021.

Contents

Early life and education

Gurnell was an undergraduate student at the University of Exeter. [1] She remained in Exeter for her doctoral research, during which she became interested in hydrology. She was particularly interested in hydrological mapping. After graduating she joined the faculty at the University of Southampton. [2]

Research and career

At Southampton, Gurnell was appointed Senior Lecturer and eventually promoted to Reader. She was awarded a personal chair at the University of Birmingham in 1995, where she stayed until she joined King's College London in 2002. She was Head of Department at King's College until 2006. [3] In 2010 Gurnell left King's College to join Queen Mary University of London. [4]

Gurnell became interested in the interaction between vegetation and fluvial processes. [3] She started studying the role of aquatic and riparian plants at landform and river-reach scales. [5] Gurnell believes that these plants are engineers of river ecosystems, impacting the development of landforms (so-called morphodynamics). She was a pioneer in better understanding riparian vegetation. [6] The complex root systems developed by riparian trees can act to reinforce fluvial landforms. In low gradient, lowland rivers aquatic plants determine the bed morphology and channel migration. She has systematically evaluated how the transport and deposition of large wood.[ citation needed ]

Gurnell was one of the founders of the Urban River Survey, [7] which analyses hundreds of metres of urban rivers, and the modular river survey, [8] which studies rivers at various spatial scales. Both tools allow members of the public and river conservation professionals to collect information about river behaviour, and aim to limit damage to nature. [5]

Awards and honours

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Physical geography</span> Study of processes and patterns in the natural environment

Physical geography is one of the three main branches of geography. Physical geography is the branch of natural science which deals with the processes and patterns in the natural environment such as the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and geosphere. This focus is in contrast with the branch of human geography, which focuses on the built environment, and technical geography, which focuses on using, studying, and creating tools to obtain,analyze, interpret, and understand spatial information. The three branches have significant overlap, however.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geomorphology</span> Scientific study of landforms

Geomorphology is the scientific study of the origin and evolution of topographic and bathymetric features created by physical, chemical or biological processes operating at or near Earth's surface. Geomorphologists seek to understand why landscapes look the way they do, to understand landform and terrain history and dynamics and to predict changes through a combination of field observations, physical experiments and numerical modeling. Geomorphologists work within disciplines such as physical geography, geology, geodesy, engineering geology, archaeology, climatology, and geotechnical engineering. This broad base of interests contributes to many research styles and interests within the field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Channel (geography)</span> Type of landform in which part of a body of water is confined to a relatively narrow but long region

In physical geography, a channel is a type of landform consisting of the outline of a path of relatively shallow and narrow body of water or of other fluids, most commonly the confine of a river, river delta or strait. The word is cognate to canal, and sometimes takes this form, e.g. the Hood Canal.


Denudation is the geological processes in which moving water, ice, wind, and waves erode the Earth's surface, leading to a reduction in elevation and in relief of landforms and landscapes. Although the terms erosion and denudation are used interchangeably, erosion is the transport of soil and rocks from one location to another, and denudation is the sum of processes, including erosion, that result in the lowering of Earth's surface. Endogenous processes such as volcanoes, earthquakes, and tectonic uplift can expose continental crust to the exogenous processes of weathering, erosion, and mass wasting. The effects of denudation have been recorded for millennia but the mechanics behind it have been debated for the past 200 years and have only begun to be understood in the past few decades.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bank (geography)</span> Land alongside a body of water

In geography, a bank is the land alongside a body of water. Different structures are referred to as banks in different fields of geography, as follows.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">European Geosciences Union</span>

The European Geosciences Union (EGU) is a non-profit international union in the fields of Earth, planetary, and space sciences whose vision is to "realise a sustainable and just future for humanity and for the planet." The organisation has headquarters in Munich (Germany). Membership is open to individuals who are professionally engaged in or associated with these fields and related studies, including students and retired seniors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Riparian zone</span> Interface between land and a river or stream

A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream. Riparian is also the proper nomenclature for one of the terrestrial biomes of the Earth. Plant habitats and communities along the river margins and banks are called riparian vegetation, characterized by hydrophilic plants. Riparian zones are important in ecology, environmental resource management, and civil engineering because of their role in soil conservation, their habitat biodiversity, and the influence they have on fauna and aquatic ecosystems, including grasslands, woodlands, wetlands, or even non-vegetative areas. In some regions, the terms riparian woodland, riparian forest, riparian buffer zone,riparian corridor, and riparian strip are used to characterize a riparian zone. The word riparian is derived from Latin ripa, meaning "river bank".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Log jam</span> Accumulation of large wood in a stream or river, preventing movement downstream

A log jam is a naturally occurring phenomenon characterized by a dense accumulation of tree trunks and pieces of large wood across a vast section of a river, stream, or lake. Log jams in rivers and streams often span the entirety of the water's surface from bank to bank. Log jams form when trees floating in the water become entangled with other trees floating in the water, or become snagged on rocks, large woody debris, or other objects anchored underwater. They can build up slowly over months or years, or they can happen instantaneously when large numbers of trees are swept into the water after natural disasters. A notable example caused by a natural disaster is the log jam that occurred in Spirit Lake following a landslide triggered by the eruption of Mount St. Helens. Until they are dismantled by natural causes or humans, log jams can grow exponentially as more wood arriving from upstream becomes entangled in the mass. Log jams can persist for many decades, as is the case with the log jam in Spirit Lake.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British Society for Geomorphology</span>

The British Society for Geomorphology (BSG), incorporating the British Geomorphological Research Group (BGRG), is the professional organisation for British geomorphologists and provides a community and services for those involved in teaching or research in geomorphology, both in the UK and overseas. The society’s journal, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms is published by Wiley-Blackwell and online access is available free to members. The society is affiliated with the Royal Geographical Society as an affiliated research group and with the Geological Society of London as a specialist group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bank erosion</span> Marginal wear of a watercourse

Bank erosion is the wearing away of the banks of a stream or river. This is distinguished from erosion of the bed of the watercourse, which is referred to as scour.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Riparian-zone restoration</span> Ecological restoration of river banks and floodplains

Riparian-zone restoration is the ecological restoration of riparian-zonehabitats of streams, rivers, springs, lakes, floodplains, and other hydrologic ecologies. A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream. Riparian is also the proper nomenclature for one of the fifteen terrestrial biomes of the earth; the habitats of plant and animal communities along the margins and river banks are called riparian vegetation, characterized by Aquatic plants and animals that favor them. Riparian zones are significant in ecology, environmental management, and civil engineering because of their role in soil conservation, their habitat biodiversity, and the influence they have on fauna and aquatic ecosystems, including grassland, woodland, wetland or sub-surface features such as water tables. In some regions the terms riparian woodland, riparian forest, riparian buffer zone, or riparian strip are used to characterize a riparian zone.

Markley Gordon Wolman was an American geographer, son of Abel Wolman. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He attended Haverford College before being drafted into the U.S. Navy during World War II. After the war, he returned to Baltimore and graduated from the Johns Hopkins University in 1949 with a degree in Geography. He earned a doctorate in Geology from Harvard University in 1953.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murugesu Sivapalan</span> Sri Lankan Tamil hydrologist

Murugesu Sivapalan is an Australian-American engineer and hydrologist of Sri Lankan Tamil origin and a world leader in the area of catchment hydrology. He is currently the Chester and Helen Siess Endowed Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and professor of Geography & Geographic Information Science, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Sivapalan is widely recognized for his fundamental research on scale issues in hydrological modeling, his leadership of global initiatives aimed at hydrologic predictions in ungauged basins, and for his role in launching the new sub-field of socio-hydrology.

Legacy sediment (LS) is depositional bodies of sediment inherited from the increase of human activities since the Neolithic. These include a broad range of land use and land cover changes, such as agricultural clearance, lumbering and clearance of native vegetation, mining, road building, urbanization, as well as alterations brought to river systems in the form of dams and other engineering structures meant to control and regulate natural fluvial processes. The concept of LS is used in geomorphology, ecology, as well as in water quality and toxicological studies.

Daniel Roy Parsons is (founding) Director of the Energy and Environment Institute and a Professor of Process Sedimentology at the University of Hull. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Illinois (USA) and Can Tho University (Vietnam). He obtained his PhD at the University of Sheffield in 2004. Parsons is known for his work on flow processes and sediment transport in rivers, coasts and estuaries, and the deep sea. This includes work addressing flood hazard and risk, as well as internationally-leading work detailing turbidity currents and associated hazards in the deep sea. Parsons also researches the leakage and transport of plastics in rivers, coasts and estuaries and as part of the Huxley debate at the 2018 British Science Festival he claimed that the most significant marker for the Anthropocene age may be the fossilisation of plastic debris such as formed in plastiglomerate. Parsons has recently completed a European Research Council Consolidator Award, is presently President of Division for Geomorphology of the European Geosciences Union and a Commissioner on the Yorkshire and Humber Climate Commission, chairing the Research and Evidence Panel.

Laurel G. Larsen is an Associate professor of Earth Systems Science for the Department of Geography and Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley where she also heads the Environmental Systems Dynamics Laboratory. Her areas of expertise include hydroecology, geomorphology, complex systems, and environmental modeling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hannah Cloke</span> Professor of Hydrology

Hannah Louise Cloke is a Professor of Hydrology at the University of Reading. She was awarded the European Geosciences Union Plinius Medal in 2018 and appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2019 Birthday Honours.

Efi Foufoula-Georgiou is a Distinguished Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at the University of California, Irvine. She is well known for her research on the applications of wavelet analysis in the fields of hydrology and geophysics and her many contributions to academic journals and national committees.

Heather Viles is a Professor of Biogeomorphology and Heritage Conservation in the School of Geography and the Environment at Oxford University, Senior Fellow at Worcester College, and Honorary Professor at the Institute of Sustainable Heritage, University College London. She is a Fellow of the British Society for Geomorphology.

Ellen E. Wohl is an American fluvial geomorphologist. She is professor of geology with the Warner College of Natural Resources at Colorado State University.

References

  1. Gurnell, Angela (1 November 2018). "Twenty-five years of progress in physical geography: a personal view of its antecedents and trajectory". Geography. 103 (3): 122–136. doi:10.1080/00167487.2018.12094049. ISSN   0016-7487. S2CID   198422755.
  2. "Penn State Engineering: Civil and Environmental Engineering Events". www.cee.psu.edu. Retrieved 1 March 2022.
  3. 1 2 "Penn State Engineering: Civil and Environmental Engineering Events". www.cee.psu.edu. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  4. "Angela Gurnell - Research Portal, King's College, London". kclpure.kcl.ac.uk. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  5. 1 2 "Angela Gurnell". www.qmul.ac.uk. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  6. "Angela M. Gurnell". European Geosciences Union (EGU). Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  7. "Urban River Survey". urbanriversurvey.org. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  8. "Modular River Survey". modularriversurvey.org. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  9. "Royal Geographical Society - Medals and awards". www.rgs.org. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  10. "Angela Gurnell (2012) | British Society for Geomorphology". www.geomorphology.org.uk. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
  11. "Alfred Wegener Medal & Honorary Membership". European Geosciences Union (EGU). Retrieved 16 January 2022.