Event Details

John is passionate about soil, the brown gold that underpins our very survival on the planet, but which most people take for granted. He has spent the last 30 years working on understanding and predicting the soil erosion processes that degrade soil functions, soil monitoring, how we can protect soils better and how soils can be managed to mitigate flooding and the pollution of surface waters. He is a member of LEC's Sustainable Soils Research Group.

Published research

His published work includes over 100 refereed journal papers (see link above), including one of the most cited papers on soil erosion describing the European Soil Erosion model (EUROSEM). More recent highly cites papers examine the global linkages between soil erosion and the cycling of nutrients and carbon, the effects of vegetation on soil physical properties, new methods for monitoring and tracing soil erosion and a new body of work exploring the lifespan of soils.

Liking to maintain an applied element to his research, John recently had his interest piqued by the shocking statistic that the UK sends significantly more soil to landfill (27 million tonnes per annum) from construction sites than is eroded from agricultural land. He brought together a team of academics, planners, developers, consultants, NGOs, master planners and landscape architects to form the soil taskforce to try and do something about the situation. The taskforce has published a series of influencial reports which are available from the website.