Environmental Processes and Resilience

Theme Leaders: Professor Sue Charlesworth and Professor Marco Van de Wiel

CAWR has transdisciplinary research strengths in a range of environmental processes, including hydrology and fluvial processes, the fate of new and emerging pollutants, as well as human-induced changes to fundamental environmental processes including climate change and biodiversity change. Resilience is the ability of systems to ‘bounce back’ or ‘bounce forward’ from, for example, some kind of disturbance, shock, dynamic natural process, environmental disaster, or disease outbreak. However, the fundamental processes underlying a system’s resilience –or lack of it– are still not well understood. CAWR’s research therefore focuses on advancing knowledge of underlying environmental processes and the relationships between them. Researching and modelling such fundamental underlying processes allows the identification, quantification, and further understanding of the role of key interacting dynamics which promote or restrict resilience in food and water systems. This new knowledge will make possible the use of smarter mitigation measures and policies to promote resilience at different scales – from fields and farms to whole landscapes, rivers and regions. The Environmental Processes and Resilience theme is home to researchers addressing these issues, with expertise in analytical and environmental chemistry, environmental science, geochemistry, environmental engineering, material science, biogeochemistry, computational modelling, climate science, applied microbiology, quaternary science and citizen science.