My research focuses on the processes that shape landscapes across human and glacial-interglacial timescales. My goals generally center around disentangling the interplay between bedrock weathering, climate, and hydrology with a focus on how these feedbacks influence specific erosional processes. Recently I’ve been fascinated with the role soil and plants play in these interactions in an effort to better understand how climate change and human land-use are affecting our modern landscape systems and what we can do about it.
Common tools include detailed field observation and measurement; the creation and analysis of high-resolution digital elevation models; remote sensing; environmental monitoring networks; rock mechanics measurements & experiments (laboratory and field); theoretical computational geomorphology; soil description and analysis; and the testing and exploration of conceptual models that emerge from these field-based methods using numerical landscape evolution model experiments. Recently, drone-based techniques have been opening new doors on many of these fronts.