Dr Kasey Clark BSc (Hon), MSc, DPhil (Geography and the Environment)

Research Overview

I am interested in the role that rivers play in carbon cycle, coastal processes and how they are influenced by hydrological processes and anthropogenic change.

The overall goal of my research is: 1) to gain a greater insight into processes driving terrestrial biogeochemical cycles and sediment fluxes; 2) to assess how river fluxes impact lake and marine biogeochemical cycles; and 3) to determine how anthropogenic, climate change and land-use drivers enhance or dampen these natural cycles.

I have a wide variety of research interests including the following mostly in the humid tropics: terrestrial and climate influence at the land-ocean interface; earth surface processes (landslide dynamics); critical zone science; river biogeochemistry (carbon and nitrogen); impacts of extreme events (drought and rainfall); river particulate organic carbon (POC) export; river suspended sediment export; river nutrients and water quality; catchment hydrology; impact of land-use and land cover (LULC) on soil, rivers, and erosion; mangrove dieback; and marine hypoxia.

I use a variety of methods in my research in part because I carry out a lot of research in the tropics where you need to collect most of the data yourself.

In the field: tropical field measurements; river and marine water sampling; water filtration for suspended & dissolved load; coupled river, rainfall and marine sampling and monitoring; and soil and vegetation sampling; ISCO river water samplers to measure flooding events; cross-section river discharge measurements; river height continuous measurements using loggers.

In the lab: carbon and nitrogen analysis of sediment using an Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometre (IRMS) and elemental analyser (C, N); water filtration; sediment, soil, and vegetation preparation for analytical analyses.

In the computer lab: LoadEstimator for river constituents loads (LoadEst); stage height or concentration discharge rating curves; mapping of landslides or land cover using satellite imagery (Landsat, Quickbird/Worldview, air photos); end-member mixing models; variety of techniques in ArcGIS (classification of land cover, interpolation of rainfall patterns and catchment distribution, and map making); rain event separation; catchment carbon mapping.