Team

Dr Ziyan Zhang

Ziyan did her PhD at Imperial College London, finishing in March 2023, with research interests in climate change impacts in ecological and hydrological systems, and assessing mitigation and adaptation measures provided by nature-based solutions across different climate zones (titled ‘Modelling the performance and sustainability of urban vegetation as Nature-based Solutions in current and future climate’). She has then worked as a research associate at ICL since October 2023. Her current research focus is investigating and understanding the impacts of enhanced rock weathering as carbon dioxide removal strategy in the ecosystem, via newly developed modelling framework T&C-SMEW.

Jordi Buckley

I recently completed my PhD in Environmental Engineering at Imperial College London in December 2025, where my research focused on process-based modelling of coupled hydrological, carbon, and vegetation dynamics under projected climate change, with applications to agricultural and forest systems. My work operates at the interface of eco-hydrology and Earth system science, with the objective of advancing understanding of the soil–water–carbon–atmosphere nexus to support climate adaptation and sustainable land-use decision-making. Prior to my doctoral research, I worked as a secondary-school Geography teacher and hold degrees from the University of Cambridge and Durham University.  

Gregory Jones

I am a PhD student working on carbon dioxide removal, with a focus on enhanced rock weathering in terrestrial ecosystems. My research combines soil biogeochemistry and ecohydrology, together with field experiments and modelling, to understand how enhanced rock weathering performs under open-system conditions. 

My doctoral work is centred on a large, highly replicated reforestation experiment in the UK, where crushed silicate rock has been applied at scale. Within this system, I quantified both inorganic carbon removal through mineral weathering and indirect organic responses, including tree growth and soil CO₂ efflux. A key theme of my work is whole-ecosystem carbon accounting, recognising that biological feedbacks can strongly amplify or offset the climate benefits of enhanced rock weathering during early deployment. 

Alongside field measurements, I co-developed and applied process-based models that explicitly represent hydrology, vegetation dynamics, microbial processes, and nutrient cycling. This modelling work was used to interpret field observations and explore how enhanced rock weathering outcomes vary across ecosystems and hydroclimatic settings. 

I have also worked on improving how enhanced rock weathering is measured and verified. I developed a soil centrifugation method to better capture the export of weathering products from the soil column, with direct implications for monitoring and verification frameworks.  

Beyond academia, I have experience working at the science–policy interface, including a secondment with the UK government assessing the feasibility of enhanced rock weathering deployment to help reach net zero. 

Dan Bartley

My doctoral research examines the environmental mechanics of regenerative agriculture through numerical modelling, focusing on the interplay between climate, hydrology, and farm management practices. 

I completed my MEng in Civil Engineering at Imperial College London before spending my final year abroad in Hong Kong, a stay that extended to six years. During this time, I pursued an MPhil in Physical Oceanography at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where I got to grips with large-scale numerical modelling using high-performance computing systems. Returning to Imperial has allowed me to continue working with environmental models, though my focus has shifted from ocean to land. 

Throughout my work, whether in oceanography, hydrology, or civil engineering, I've been drawn to applying numerical methods to environmental problems, particularly where natural systems meet human activity. The transition from ocean to land surface modelling has been useful. Both domains share fundamental physics yet require quite different numerical approaches. Moving between them has given me a broader view of how we represent environmental processes computationally. 

What appeals to me most is the challenge of reducing complex systems to their essential behaviours without losing scientific meaning. There's a particular satisfaction in developing algorithms that balance computational efficiency with physical accuracy, capturing what matters while remaining tractable. This balance is important for making models that are not just mathematically sound but genuinely useful for understanding how environmental systems respond to change. 

Ruiqi Gu

My PhD research focuses on understanding mountain ecohydrology using process-based numerical modelling. I investigate coupled water–carbon–energy cycles in high-elevation mountain catchments, with a particular emphasis on the Andes. To assess the availability and variability of regional water components under land cover change and climate change, an important theme of my work is the integration of land surface models with the collection and analysis of in-situ observations and remote-sensing data.

Jojo Yan

I am a PhD student in Environmental Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Imperial College London. My research focuses on ecohydrology and carbon dynamics in forest ecosystems during the post-disturbance reforestation process. In my PhD work, I use the process-based Tethys–Chloris (T&C) model with a dynamic vegetation scheme to simulate and analyse juvenile forest regrowth, benchmarking model outputs against hydrological and carbon flux data collected from forest flux sites across boreal, temperate, and tropical regions.

My work incorporates interspecific competition to better represent the replacement and adaptation of multiple plant functional types in post-disturbance ecosystems, with a focus on changes in plant density, canopy cover, and resource availability. Overall, my research aims to improve understanding of how regional ecosystem dynamics influence the global climate and to support evidence-based decision-making for reforestation and ecosystem management.