Professional summary
Chris is a biogeochemist with 30 years of research experience in upland and peatland biogeochemistry, soil and water carbon and nitrogen cycling, greenhouse gases and water quality, process modelling, long-term and large-scale data analysis. His interests include the measurement and mitigation of land-use impacts on peatland greenhouse gas emissions; effects of land-management and pollution and climate on water quality and the aquatic carbon cycle; long-term environmental change impacts on terrestrial and biogeochemistry; translation of scientific understanding into policy and land management decision-making, and GHG emissions inventory reporting.
Chris currently leads projects NERC, Defra, DESNZ, and others with a total value exceeding £12m. These include the major UKRI Peatland Greenhouse Gas Demonstrator project, and Phase 3 of the Defra Lowland Peat Programme, on measurement and mitigation of GHG emissions from lowland agricultural peatlands, supporting UK national inventory reporting and the UK Net Zero strategy. He also works with partners in SE Asia on mitigating GHG emissions from tropical peatlands, and has helped to establish projects that are collecting the first GHG flux measurements from intact and degraded peatlands in the Falkland Islands. His work includes the development and deployment of low-cost field sensors, linked to satellite observations, for monitoring and verification of terrestrial and aquatic GHG fluxes, supported by a £1m NERC grant with additional funding from Natural England and the private sector. He works with a wide range of private sector, farming, NGO and international groups including current projects or advisory roles with Arla, Royal London Asset Management, Fenland Soil, the IUCN Peatland Programme, the RSPB, Nattergal, Falklands Conservation, Asia Pacific Resources International Ltd, Permian Global and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.
He has supervised 21 completed PhD students, and has 3 current students. He has published over 200 journal articles, including >10 in Nature and Science journals, which have been cited over 20,000 times, and has a Google Scholar H-Index of 71. He is an Honorary Professor at Bangor University and was the King’s Guest Professor in Environmental Sciences and subsequently a Visiting Professor at the Swedish Agricultural University from 2015 to 2023. He was awarded an MBE for services to ecosystem science in the Queen’s birthday honours, 2020.