Two weeks until our 2/12 PhD funding deadline! If you’re interested in a cryptotephra research project and joining @camtephra.bsky.social there’s still time drop me an email to discuss your ideas. Dept funding info: www.geog.cam.ac.uk/postgraduate... NERC DLA: nercdtp.esc.cam.ac.uk/StaffDirecto...

Thrilled & honored to be included in the @clarivate.com Highly Cited Researcher List 2025! 🚀 Huge thanks to my collaborators & the present & past members of the @BioFunLab Proud to contribute to the international visibility of @irnase.bsky.social & @csic.es clarivate.com/highly-cited...

Primary sucession...in Manchester! The Castlefield Viaduct was abandoned for much of the 20th Century and nature took over. Now an outstanding example of urban biodiversity @nationaltrust.org.uk

Hard to disagree with this sentiment

Francis Crick, Nobel Prize winner who co-discovered the structure of DNA, "never had to teach or grapple with university administration: he applied for a grant only once in his life." www.nature.com/articles/d41... No information on the outcome of his application...

📢Are you interested in studying for a PhD in the environmental sciences? 👉🏻Consider joining our vibrant Physical Geography community at Newcastle University for a funded PhD studentship. We have 9 new exciting opportunities. See more details on our LinkedIn Page: www.linkedin.com/posts/geogra...

New PhD project with me, Althea Davies and Louise de Raad of Zulu Ecosystems: "The legacy of lost woods: soil microbial communities and the regeneration of the Caledonian Forest". Full details here: iapetus.ac.uk/studentships...

Well, this looks interesting...and highly relevant to my @royalsociety.org International Exchange project with Dr Jenny Zambrano of @pullman.wsu.edu

Tomorrow, we will talk about this photo.

A sunny Sunday in Newcastle, along the Ouseburn

Resuspended volcanic ash: a niche interest of mine! www.cnn.com/2025/09/17/w...

St Andrews, South Lopham looked very pretty in the moonlight

The Plough over Norfolk last night

At Churchill College for a brief visit. Wonderful to be back: like coming home.

OTD in 2010 I was fortunate enough to visit the cupola on top of the Radcliffe Camera during renovation works: a once in a lifetime opportunity. The views of Oxford were quite something.

A lot of great experiences on my recent trip to Australia. But swimming with humpback whales on the Ningaloo Reef was definitely one of the highlights.

You'll be missed, Andy: a terrific colleague and great geographer

Thrilled to have received the Richardson Medal from the @igsoc.bsky.social at the IGS symposium last night. I’m so touched and thank you to everyone who nominated me ❤️

In addition to awesome old growth forests, western Washington State also has abundant marine life. Including a jellyfish that looks like...a fried egg?

Olympic National Forest. We paced-out this fallen Douglas Fir: it was >60 m long (and would have been taller when it was alive)

Loving the Evergreen State College campus: brutalist architecture in a temperate rainforest (it really works!)

Installation of experiment complete: 30 plots, 10 with 5 cm of tephra, 10 with 10 cm and 10 controls. Plus soil moisture/temperature probes and a collar for making soil respiration measurements. Tremendous assistance from our student helpers Jarrett, Maddy and Gates. Hard work, but great fun.

Beautiful Olympia

The Evergreen State College's wonderful experimental forest: heaven for lovers of ferns and bryophytes (and a great location for our tephra application experiments).

In Washington State, setting up an experiment to investigate the ecological impact of volcanic ash deposition. Step 1: drive 400 kg of ash from the 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens from Pullman to the Evergreen State College's experimental forest in Olympia. Research supported by @royalsociety.org.

That moment when I have to download one of my own papers to read, in order to remember what I think about something 😆😆😆

The world's coolest swimming pool? Must be in the top 10, surely?

A great week of fieldwork: terrific weather, great scenary and some fascinating ecology. Thanks to @naturescot.bsky.social & @rspbscotland.bsky.social Abernethy for facilitating. Now, to the lab!

My Scottish fieldwork included a 300+ year-old pear orchard at Megginch Castle: quite a rarity.

Great week of fieldwork in Scotland, collecting samples for a project investigating the link between tree cover and soil microbial communities. The sampling encompassed (semi-) natural coniferous and deciduous woodland and agricultural trees (orchards). Some striking contrasts!

At @royalholloway.bsky.social for the inaugural lecture of my good friend @inneskeighren.bsky.social . Always a thrill to be massively outperformed by an immediate contemporary! Well done Innes!

Delighted my new article on stone lichens and conservation is out with @uk.theconversation.com. It’s time to think differently about stone… theconversation.com/how-lichens-...

May 18th 1980. Mount St. Helens is, in my opinion, one of the most amazing volcanoes in the US. This eruption was both tragic and scientific gift, an inspiration to many to learn more. Me included. I love going to visit her, with my geology friends, as she still has many stories to tell us. 🌋🧪⚒️

#MSH45 | 8:32 a.m. The ground shudders. A M5.1 quake hits beneath Mount St. Helens. The bulge collapses outward. Within seconds, a lateral blast surges through the disintegrating slope. 7 miles north, Gerry Martin describes what he sees—until the radio goes silent.

Happy to announce that my project "Upscaling estimates of Arctic soil nutrient availability from plot to landscape" - led by Richard Streeter of University of St Andrews - is going to be supported by POLARIN. Excited about our upcoming trip to Arctic Finland this summer!

Please join me, if you can/want to, for my (in-person) inaugural lecture—"The archive in the armoire: rediscovering the global lives of William Macintosh"—on Tuesday, 20 May, at Royal Holloway, University of London. www.royalholloway.ac.uk/about-us/eve... #C18

Delighted to have been awarded a @royalsociety.org International Exchanges grant to work with Dr Jenny Zambrano (WSU) on the project: "Uncovering the impacts of volcanic ash deposition on plant and soil communities". Fieldwork starts this summer in Washington State.

Delighted to announce that I will be Co-Investigator on Rob Shaw's @leverhulme.bsky.social funded project 'Urban Sensory Pollutants in Singapore and Johor Bahru', starting in June. Looking forward to working with you, Rob!

Terrific week in the Cairngorms recce-ing sites for the EVOLBIOME survey. Many thanks to the folks at @naturescot.bsky.social, Forestry & Land Scotland, @cairngormsnews.bsky.social and @rspb.bsky.social Abernethy for assistance. Looking forward to returning in May to carry out the sampling.

Polar science needs diversity. I stand in solidarity with my USA colleagues who are seeing destructive practices rolling back decades of progress. www.antarcticglaciers.org/2025/02/pola...

#Jökulhlaup en route through #Skeiðarárjökull from #Grímsvötn subglacial lake. en.vedur.is/about-imo/ne... Some photos of the 2021 Grímsvötn jökulhlaup outlets on the eastern margin of Skeiðarárjökull taken in April 2022.