Function and Responsibilities:

I am a W2 professor in Section 4.6 (Geomorphology), leading a group on Landscape Evolution and Climate Interactions, with a joint appointment and teaching responsibilities at the University of Potsdam.

Research Interests:

I am interested in how climate and tectonic forcing influence landscape form, erosion rates, erosion processes, and sedimentation patterns. My group and I investigate this problem in mountainous source areas through a combination of modelling and empirical data on exhumation rates derived from thermochronology and cosmogenic nuclides. Farther downstream, we also approach this problem through empirical field studies on alluvial fans and fill terraces, and recently also through physical experiments and model development on the controls of gravel-bedded profiles.

Link to  Google Scholar page

Career:

Since 2015: W2 Professor, Section 4.6 (Geomorphology), GFZ Potsdam 2013 - 2015: Emmy Noether Group leader, University of Potsdam, Germany 2011 - 2013: Post-doctoral researcher and lecturer, University of Potsdam, Germany 2009 - 2011: Alexander von Humboldt Post-doctoral Fellow 2008 - 2009: Post-doctoral researcher, DFG-Leibniz Center for Earth Surface and Climate Studies, University of Potsdam

Education:

2000: B.A. in Geosciences, Williams College, USA

Projects:

• GyroSCoPe (ERC Consolidator grant, 2020 - 2024): Geomorphic and Sedimentary responses to Climate Periodicity. The overarching goal of the project is to better understand how periodic changes in climate have influenced the evolution of landscape and how that evolution may be best reconstructed from sedimentary deposits. Post-doctoral researcher Fergus McNab is the first to join this project. He will work on calibrating a new model of the long-profile evolution of gravel-bedded channels from well constrained field sites, and use the calibrated model to reconstruct past environmental forcing conditions in landscapes characterized by alluvial landforms. Doctoral researcher Andreas Ruby will be investigating how we can use river terraces and glacial moraines to better understand how climate changes have affected erosion and sediment transport in the Kyrgyz Tien Shan. Future components of the project will include field work in the Patagonian Andes.
• ICEHouse (Emmy Noether grant, 2013 - 2017):  Impacts of Climate change on Erosion and Hillslope processes. Former Ph.D. candidate Stefanie Tofelde (now a lecturer at the University of Potsdam) used field observations of fluvial fill terraces and modern observations of detrital 10Be concentrations to reconstruct landscape response to climate forcing on millennial timescales. Former post-doctoral researcher Jürgen Mey (now a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Potsdam) has derived precise constraints on paleoclimate conditions during the last glacial advances by coupling paleolake and glacier modeling. Former post-doctoral researcher and Alexander von Humboldt fellow Mitch D'Arcy (now an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia) has investigated how alluvial-fan sedimentology and architecture may reflect past climatic fluctuations, and what glacial moraine records may reveal about climatic teleconnections throughout South America. Former post-doctoral researcher Andrew Wickert (now an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota) has developed a new model of the long-profile evolution of gravel-bedded rivers, with a focus on the controls of river aggradation and incision. 
• LandFlux project (Marie Curie Individual Fellowship, 2018 - 2020): Post-doctoral researcher and Marie Curie fellow Duna Roda-Boluda is working on quantifying landslide activity and their contribution to sediment fluxes with cosmogenic radionuclides (10Be and 14C) in the Southern Alps and Fiordland of New Zealand.
• StRATEGy (DFG grant, 2015 - 2020): SuRfAce processes, TEctonics and Georesources: The Andean forland basin of Argentina. Post-doctoral researcher Heiko Pingel (now a lecturer at the University of Potsdam) has reconstructed paleo-erosion rates over the past 5 million years from the Humahuaca Basin of NW Argentina using the cosmogenic 10Be, and illustrated the tight link in this region between topographic development, climate changes, and erosion rates. Post-doctoral researcher Elizabeth Orr has used 10Be to date a sequence of alluvial-fan surfaces in the Toro Basin that appear to date back to ca. 1 Ma, highlighting the prominent role of the Mid-Pleistocene Transition in affecting landscape evolution of the Central Andes.

Research Boards and Committees:

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