Grant recipients surveying permanent quadrats to assess coral recruitment, growth and survival. Image courtesy of Dr James Guest
We are pleased to announce this year’s projects selected for funding through our grants for senior and early-career researchers, supporting geographical field research into topics across the discipline.
Dr James Guest and Liam Lachs from Newcastle University have jointly received this year’s Ralph Brown Expedition Award for research in aquatic environments. Focusing on the isolated coral reefs of Palau, Micronesia, this research aims to establish the links between population dynamics, thermal regimes, and bleaching resistance, as coral reefs face unprecedented declines due to climate change, marine heatwaves, and mass bleaching events.
Professor Kathryn Fitzsimmons (University of Tübingen, Germany) and Dr Samuel De Canio (King’s College London) have been selected as this year’s Thesiger-Oman International Fellowship recipients for research in arid environments. Professor Fitzsimmons’s work in the Panj catchment on the Tajik-Afghan border will address the gap in our understanding of sediment mobilisation associated with desertification and the role played by climate change. In doing so, the project aims to assess the risk of future mobilisation in the context of climate change.
Dr De Canio’s research aims to create a public archive of knowledge about Bedouin life by documenting their customs, culture, and oral heritage through interviews conducted by Saudi citizens. The project will contribute to academic study and offer a valuable resource for anyone interested in learning about Bedouin culture.
Dr Christopher Darvill from the University of Manchester is this year’s recipient of the Walters Kundert Fellowship for research in arctic and high-mountain environments. Dr Darvill’s project will collect new glacier and lake records in the Dibang Valley of high-mountain Arunachal Pradesh, India. The research aims to reconstruct the long-term changes in monsoon dynamics and glacier sensitivity in the Eastern Himalaya, a region where monsoon rainfall and glaciers play a dominant ecological, socio-economic and religious role in the lives of millions.
Two projects have been awarded this year’s Environment and Sustainability Research Grants. Dr Sophie Blackburn from the University of Reading will examine climate adaptation and social contracts in southern Louisiana, while Dr Daniel Magnone of the University of Lincoln’s research investigates quantifying groundwater-volatile organic compounds in response to saline intrusion.
Through the Society’s Small Research Grants for early-career researchers, this year we are supporting seven projects on topics ranging from glacier lake outburst flood hazards in the Himalaya to land grabs on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. See the full list of projects supported here.
The Gilchrist Educational Trust has awarded this year’s Gilchrist Fieldwork Award to Dr Callum Munday from the University of Oxford. Dr Munday’s project aims to observe the dynamics of the Kalahari atmosphere, which is warming at double the global rate and affects winds and rainfall for thousands of kilometres, to better understand the rapid warming and future delayed rainfall onset that affects millions of lives.
The next deadlines for the Society’s research grants are in November.
Find out more and how to apply