Dr Josie Geris | The 51cg

Dr Josie Geris

Reader

51cg

Email Address: j.geris@abdn.ac.uk
Telephone Number: +44 (0)1224 273728
School/Department: School of Geosciences

Biography

2022-: 0.8 FTE Reader in Hydrology, School of Geosciences, 51cg
2019-2022: Senior Lecturer in Hydrology, School of Geosciences, 51cg (leave: August 2019 - May 2020)
2014-2019: Lecturer in Hydrology, School of Geosciences, 51cg (leave: September 2015 - March 2016)
2012-2014: Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Northern Rivers Institute, School of Geosciences, 51cg
2008-2012: PhD Degree Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. Thesis on: 'Multiscale impacts of land use/management changes on flood response'
2005-2007: MSc EcoHydrology, VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands. Thesis on: 'Changes in soil physical characteristics and hillslope hydrological response associated with forest conversion to pasture'
2002-2005: BSc Earth Sciences, VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Research

Research Overview

My research is focussed primarily on understanding catchment processes at different scales and how these are affected by (environmental) change, with the ultimate aim to better inform sustainable management of catchments for the future. The main drivers of (eco)hydrological processes are sought through the integration of monitoring and modelling of systems. Key research interests include:

Vegetation- and soil–water linkages with respect to water storage, transmission and release
Flood and drought management using nature-based solutions
Multiscale catchment hydrology
Detection and prediction of water resources and land use/management practices impacts on catchment hydrological behaviour

These are addressed using field based approaches in conjunction with hydrological modelling at multiple spatial scales, and also include the interpretation of environmental tracers (stable water isotopes), and statistical methods.

Supervision

Current:

Antonia Foley (lead supervisor)
Jennifer Pirie (lead supervisor)
(co-supervisor)
Jessica Brook (School of Biological Sciences, co-supervisor)

Recently completed:

Oludare Durodola (PhD student, lead supervisor)
Julie Rostan (Postdoctoral researcher; line manager)
Utibe Utin (PhD student at School of Biological Sciences; co-supervisor)
Salim Goudarzi (Postdoctoral researcher; line manager)
Martyn Roberts (PhD student, lead supervisor)
Liam Godwin (PhD student at University of Highlands and Islands, co-supervisor)
Emma Hayes (PhD student at Queens University Belfast; co-supervisor)
Eva Loerke (Postdoctoral Researcher, PhD student; lead supervisor)
Jessica Fennell (PhD student; lead supervisor)
Katya Dimitrova-Petrova (Postdoctoral Researcher, PhD student; lead supervisor)
Bas Buddendorf (PhD student; co-supervisor)
Lucile Verrot (Postdoctoral researcher; line manager)

Funding and Grants

Current:

2026-2027: 'When wet places run dry: Shaping Scotland’s water resources resilience to drought', Royal Society of Edinburgh, £60K, PI
2024-2028: 'The role of surface water - groundwater connections on the potential for managing water supply with nature-based solutions', £100K, PI

Completed:

2023-2025: 'Creating healthy and resilient river systems across Scotland: prioritising research and development gap opportunities for river woodlands', £200K, Centre of Expertise for Waters (CREW), Co-PI
2023-2025: 'Resilience and vulnerability of water resources under drought conditions - new insights from integrated in-situ and remote sensing approaches', £18K, Royal Society, PI
2023-2024: 'Understanding the relationship between water scarcity and land use in private water supply catchments', £95K, Centre of Expertise for Waters (CREW), PI
2023-2024: 'Future predictions of water scarcity in Scotland: impacts to distilleries and agricultural abstractors', £100K, Centre of Expertise for Waters (CREW), Co-I
2022-2025: ': Balancing farm and landscape-scale demands for integrating trees on agricultural land', £505K to Aberdeen, NERC, PI
2021-2025: 'Optimising water use and soil carbon sequestration - can agricultural co-cropping systems provide multiple benefits to address climate change?', £173K, Scottish Funding Council via Hydronation programme, PI
2021-2024: 'Complementary or competitive agroforestry water and nutrient use? – Implications for shade tree management in tropical agroforestry', £12K, Royal Society, PI
2021: 'Establishing the potential influence of beaver activity on the natural functioning of rivers and streams and water resource management in Scotland', £35K, Centre of Expertise for Waters (CREW), PI
2020-2024: 'The role of place and scale on effectiveness of temporary storage areas for surface runoff attenuation', £100K, Scottish Funding Council via Hydronation programme, PI
2019-2023: 'Exploring UAV thermal remote sensing for assessing management implications for stream temperatures', £90K, Macaulay Development Trust, PI
2019-2022: 'MIDST-CZ: maximising impact by decision support tools for sustainable soil and water through UK-China critical zone science', £220K to Aberdeen, NERC, Co-I
2019-2021: 'Plant water use in tea, coffee and cacao agroforestry - benchmarking research challenges and building connections', £15K, Scottish Research Council, PI
2019-2021: 'Plant water availability and use in coffee agroforestry systems – exploring changes in water use strategies', £10K, The Carnegie Trust for Scottish Universities, PI
2018-2022: 'Connect4 water resilience: connecting water resources, communities, drought and flood hazards, and governance across 4 countries in the Limpopo basin', £250K, NERC/DFIC, Co-I
2018: 'Water and the circular economy - where is the greatest sustainable economic benefit for resource recovery in the water cycle?', £37K, Centre of Expertise for Waters (CREW), Co-I
2017-2022: 'Evaluating nature based strategies in rural landscapes for managing low flows and stream temperatures', £90K, NERC and Chivas Brothers, PI
2017-2020: 'Integrating novel water storage and flow sensing techniques to improve hydrological models/predictions', £70K, Macaulay Development Trust, PI
2017-2018: 'Extreme rainfall and floods in arid regions: replenishment or contamination of water resources?', £56K, NERC Urgency Grant, Co-I
2016-2018: 'Red Soil CZ: From natural to anthropogenic evolution of Red Soil and its impact on ecosystem function in the Critical Zone', £800K to Aberdeen, NERC, Co-I
2015-2016: ‘Can novel cosmic ray soil moisture probes be used to address the urgent need for upscaling water storage and flux dynamics in hydrological models?’, £15K, Royal Society, PI
2015-2016: ‘Suspended sediment transport dynamics in tropical volcanic landforms’, £5K, British Society for Geomorphology, PI
2015-2016: ‘Integrated approaches to assess multiscale water sources, flow paths and residence times in changing landscapes’, £7.5K, The Carnegie Trust for Scottish Universities, PI

Teaching

Teaching Responsibilities

Course Co-ordinator and Instructor

GG2013 Physical Environments (2nd year course)
GG4071 Environmental Hydrology (4th year course)

Additional Teaching

GG2508 Skills and Techniques in Geosciences
GG2510 Mapping & Monitoring the Environment
BSc and MSc thesis supervisor
Personal Tutor

Publications

Update

51cg

Biography

Research Overview

Supervision

Funding and Grants

Teaching Responsibilities

Course Co-ordinator and Instructor

Additional Teaching

Time variable effectiveness and cost-benefits of different nature-based solution types and design for drought and flood management

Surface Measure to Depth (SMeTD): a new low-budget system for 3D water temperature measurements for combining with UAV-based thermal infrared imagery

Long-term daily stream temperature record for Scotland reveals spatio-temporal patterns in warming of rivers in the past and further warming in the future

High-resolution assessment of riverbank erosion and stabilisation techniques with associated water quality implications

Weighted risk assessment of critical source areas for soil phosphorus losses through surface runoff mechanisms

Mitigating floods and attenuating surface runoff with temporary storage areas in headwaters

Assessing the role of location and scale of Nature Based Solutions for the enhancement of low flows

Grassland reseeding: Impact on soil surface nutrient accumulation and using LiDAR-based image differencing to infer implications for water quality

Surface water-groundwater interactions and local land use control water quality impacts of extreme rainfall and flooding in a vulnerable semi-arid region of Sub-Saharan Africa

Assessing land use influences on isotopic variability and stream water ages in urbanising rural catchments

COSMOS-Europe: a European network of cosmic-ray neutron soil moisture sensors

Grassland Reseeding—Improving Grassland Productivity and Reducing Excess Soil Surface Nutrient Accumulations

Establishing the potential influence of beaver activity on the functioning of rivers and streams and water resource management in Scotland

Combining static and portable Cosmic Ray Neutron Sensor data to assess catchment scale heterogeneity in soil water storage and their integrated role in catchment runoff response

Importance of short-term temporal variability in soil physical properties for soil water modelling under different tillage practices

Using LiDAR derived Digital Terrain Models and field data to quantify riverbank erosion and nutrient loading rates

Multisector Collaborative Groundwater-Surface Water Modelling Approach to Improve Resilience to Hydrological Extremes in the Limpopo River Basin

Lessons from the 2018 drought for management of local water supplies in upland areas: a tracer-based assessment

Opportunities and challenges in using catchment-scale storage estimates from cosmic ray neutron sensors for rainfall-runoff modelling

Coffee and shade trees show complementary use of soil water in a traditional agroforestry ecosystem

Water sources for root water uptake: Using stable isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen as a research tool in agricultural and agroforestry systems

Depth distribution of soil water sourced by plants at the global scale: a new direct inference approach

Modern sediment records of hydroclimatic extremes and associated potential contaminant mobilization in semi-arid environments: lessons learnt from recent flood-drought cycles in southern Botswana

Using isotopes to understand the evolution of water ages in disturbed mixed land‐use catchments

Exploring extreme rainfall impacts on flow and turbidity dynamics in a steep, pristine and tropical volcanic catchment

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