Dr Martin Evans

Dr Martin Evans’ has research interests in the geomorphology and hydrology of upland landscapes.  A key approach is the development of sediment budgets through a mix of field monitoring, stratigraphic reconstruction, and modelling. The role of slope-channel linkage as a control on catchment sediment yields is a theme running through much of his work. A particular focus at present is on the sediment systems of upland peatlands including analysis of flux of carbon and of pollutants from peatland systems. This work also considers implications of natural sediment dynamics for moorland restoration.

In Progress

Remote sensing of peatland restoration

A new project in the Dark Peak area of the Peak District National Park with Aletta Bonn of Moors for the Future Partnership (MFF) and Natural England, supported by a NERC CASE studentship. 

Monitoring carbon flux from restoration and wildfire sites on blanket peat.
Researchers Martin Evans, Richard Pawson in collaboration with Fred Worrall and James Rawson, Department of Earth Sciences at Durham University. Funded by Moors for the Future.

Geomorphological controls on carbon flux from eroding peatlands.
Researchers: Martin Evans, James Rothwell, Sarah Crowe, Laura Liddaman, Richard Pawson  

Mapping gully erosion in blanket peatlands.
Researchers: John Lindsay and Martin Evans. Funding from Manchester Geographical Society

Long term geomorphological monitoring at a Environmental Change. Network Site Researchers: Martin Evans in collaboration with Jeff Warburton, Geography, Durham University. Funded by the British Geomorphological Research Group).

Completed

Understanding gully blocking in deep peat.
Researchers: Martin Evans, Tim Allott, Sarah Crowe, Laura Liddaman. Funded by Moors for the Future Project.

Sediment budgets of upland blanket peat.
Researchers: Martin Evans, Juan Yang, in collaboration with Jeff Warburton, Geography, Durham University.

Hyperspectral remote sensing of blanket peat moorlands.
Researchers: Julia McMorrow, Martin Evans, Amer Al-Roichdi in collaboration with University of Dundee. Supported by NERC/BNSC SHAC and SWIR airborne campaigns and Manchester University.

Teaching commitments

Year 1:

Earth Surface Processes

Year 2:

GE2402 River Catchment Processes

Crete Fieldcourse.

Year 3:

GE3110 Upland Environments

Postgraduate:

Director of the MSc in Environmental Monitoring, Modelling and Reconstruction

Current and past postgraduate students

Current

Amer Al-Roichdi - Hyper spectral remote sensing of upland peatlands

Sarah Crowe - Re-vegetation of eroding peatland gullies

Steve Daniels - Controls on streamwater acidity in peatland streams

Laura Liddaman - Pattern analysis to assess connectivity of sediment systems and predict sediment flux in eroding blanket peat catchments (Ph.D.).

Richard Pawson - The fluvial carbon flux from eroding peatlands

James Rothwell - Storage and release of heavy metals from upland peats

Completed

Alan Clark - Climate and catchmet impacts on lake acidification

Juan Yang - Modelling sediment flux for upland peat catchments

PhD Opportunities

I am always keen to talk to enthusiastic and well qualified students about PhD opportunities. I am happy to supervise a wide range of projects relating to upland geomorphology and hydrology, physical processes in peatlands, and sediment and carbon budgets. The following is a list of interesting problems relating to ongoing research agendas which could be worked up into more detailed proposals. Please feel free to contact me to discuss any of these further:

• Gully erosion as a control on carbon flux from peatlands, considering the effects of particulate carbon flux, water table depression and re-vegetation.
• Modelling peatland sediment flux as an input into regional carbon flux modelling.
• Re-vegetation and sediment flux from eroding peatlands a plotscale experimental approach – investigating the utility of buffer strips in the uplands.
• Application of image based particle characterisation to analysis of sediment delivery from eroding peatlands.
• The effects of peatland re-vegetation on the carbon balance of upland peats.

Lindsay JB, and Evans, MG. (in review) The influence of elevation error on the morphometrics of channel networks extracted from DEMs and the implications for hydrological modelling. Hydrological Processes.

Evans, M. and Warburton, J. (2007 in press) The Geomorphology of Upland Peat: Pattern, Process, Form. Blackwells, in the Royal Geographical Society Monograph series.

Worrall, F., Burt, T.P., Adamson, J.K., Reed, M., Warburton, J., Armstrong, A., and M.Evans. (in press) Predicting the future carbon budget of an upland peat catchment. Climatic Change.

Rothwell, J.J., Evans, M.G., Liddaman, L.C., Allott, T.E.H. (in press). The role of wildfire and gully erosion in particulate lead export from contaminated peatland catchments in the southern Pennines. Geomorphology.

Rothwell, J.J., Evans, M.G., Allott, T.E.H. (in press). Lead contamination of fluvial sediments in an eroding blanket peat catchment. Applied Geochemistry.

Rothwell, J.J. Evans, M.G., Lindsay, J.B. Allott, T.E.H. (2007). Scale-dependant spatial variability in peatland lead pollution in the southern Pennines, UK. Environmental Pollution. 145 (1), 111-120.

Rothwell, J.J., Allott, T.E.H., Evans, M.G. (2006). Sediment-water interactions in an eroded and heavy metal contaminated peatland catchment, southern Pennines, UK. Water Air and Soil Pollution. DOI: 10.1007/s11267-006-9052-3.

Evans, M. Warburton, J. and Yang, J. (2006) Sediment Budgets for Eroding Blanket Peat Catchments: Global and local implications of upland organic sediment budgets Geomorphology 79, (1-2) 45-57.

Holden, J., Chapman, P., Evans, M., Hubaceck, K. Kay, P. and Warburton, J. (2006) vulnerability of organic soils in England and Wales. Final report to DEFRA Project SP0532.

Holden, J., Burt, T.P., Evans, M.G. and Horton, M. (2006) Impact of land drainage on peatland hydrology. Journal of Environmental Quality, 35, 1764-1778.

Evans, M. and Warburton, J. (2005) Sediment budget for an eroding peat moorland catchment in northern England Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 30 557-577.

Evans, M., Allott, T., Holden, J., Flitcroft, C. And Bonn, A. (2005) Understanding gully blocking in deep peat. Moors For the Future Report 4. Moors for the future, Castleton. 105p.

Rothwell, J.J., Robinson, S.G., Evans, M.G., Yang, J., Allott, T.E.H. (2005). Heavy metal release by peat erosion in the Peak District, southern Pennines, UK, Hydrological Processes 19 (15), 2973-2989.

Evans, M. and Slaymaker, O. 2004 ‘Patterns of Holocene sediment yield in the alpine/subalpine zone, Cascade Mountains, British Columbia.’ Geomorphology 61 209-224.

McMorrow, J.M., Cutler, M.E., Evans, M., and Al-Roichdi, A. (2004) The effect of moisture content and humification on the hyperspectral reflectance of peat. Proceedings of the 2003 Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry conference, Nottingham.

Heinrichs, M.L., Evans, M.G., Hebda, R.J., Walker, I.R., Palmer, S.L and Rosenberg, S.M. (2004) Holocene climatic change and landscape response at Cathedral Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada. In press in Geographie Physique et Quaternaire 58(1) 123-139.

Evans, M. (2003) Sedimentation in Goudie, A.S. (ed) The encyclopaedia of Geomorphology. Wiley, Chichester

McMorrow,. J.M., Cutler, M.E.J, Evans, M.G. and Al-Roichdi, A. (2003) 'Characterising upland peat composition with hyperspectral data' International Journal of Remote Sensing 24 1-13.

McMorrow, J.M., Evans, M., Cutler, M.E.J and Al-Roichdi, A. (2003) 'Towards hyperspectral indices of upland peat composition', Proc. NERC conference on Field Spectral Measurements, Southampton 15-16 April 2002.

Warburton, J, Evans, M. and Johnson, R. (2003) Discussion of 'The extent of soil erosion in Upland England and Wales' Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 28 219-223.

Cutler, M.E.J, McMorrow, J.M. and Evans, M. (2002) 'Remote sensing of upland peat erosion in the southern Pennines' Northwest Geographer. 2 (1): 20-30.

Evans M.G. and Warburton, J. (2001) Transport and disperal of organic debris (peat blocks) in upland fluvial systems. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 26(10) 1087-1103.

Higgitt, D. Warburton, J. and Evans, M. (2001) Upland sediment systems in in Lee, M. and Higgitt, D. (eds) Millennium geomorphology, Wiley. Chichester.

Evans, M. and Church, M.C. (2000) A new method for the analysis of error in lake-sediment-derived sediment yield estimates. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 25 1257-1267.

Evans, M. 2000 ‘Slope-channel linkages as a control on geomorphic sensitivity in alpine basins, Cascade Mountains, British Columbia’ in Slaymaker O. (ed) Geomorphology Human Activity and Global Environmental Change Wiley, Chichester. p. 95-115.

Selected Conference Presentations

Selected Conference Presentations

2006 Evans, M.G. and Lindsay, J. Geomorphological Controls on Gully Re-vegetation in Blanket Peats Paper presented at the 2006 Annual Conference of the RGS/IBG

2006 Evans, M. and Lindsay, J. Use of high resolution digital elevation data to investigate gully erosion in blanket peat paper presented at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2006, Vienna, Austria.

2005 Evans, M. and Lindsay, J. Topographic controls on gully erosion of upland peatlands Paper presented at the 5th International Association of Geomorphologists meeting, Zaragoza, Spain, August 2005.

2004 Evans, M., Warburton, J. and Yang, J. Sediment Budgets for Eroding Blanket Peat Catchments: Implications Environmental Management and Global Change. Paper presented at the International Conference on Sediment Budgets, Vancouver June 2004.

2002 Evans, M., and Warburton, J. Sediment delivery in peatland catchments: implications for catchment carbon budgets presented at the 2002 BGRG AGM, Leeds.

2001 Evans, M.G. and Warburton, J. Sediment Production and Delivery in Blanket Peat Catchments: Progress Towards a Sediment Budget for Upland Blanket Peatlands presented at the 5th International Geomorphology Conference, Tokyo, August 2001.

Martin Evans was an invited speaker at the ‘Drivers of Change’ (2004) and Upland Ecosystem services (2006) and was an invited presenter at the 2006 Carbon expert workshop, all sponsored by Moors for the Future. He was also invited to attend the 2006 DEFRA expert workshop on soil carbon. He was Editor of Geophemera and member of the BGRG executive committee 1999-2002. and is a regular reviewer for a wide range of journals including Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, Canadian Journal of Earth Science,. Palaeo3, Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Earth Science Reviews, Water Resources Research, Geomorphology, Hydrological Processes and Journal of Hydrology; and for publishers including Pearson, Cambridge University Press, Blackwell and the Geological Society

Academic websites of interest

• Upland Environments Research Unit