Below you can find a bit more detail on some of the fieldwork I have been involved in, predominantly three main campaigns during my PhD. I am confident and competent at working in harsh field environments, creating and following health and safety risk assessments. I have experience operating at high altitude and on glacial terrain with mountaineering and rope skills such as crevasse rescue equipment and procedures.
At the bottom of the page are three short videos I created to document the feeling of each of these field campaigns, which is a bit of a hobby, though in the future I'd love to develop this further into more serious documentaries to communicate the science to public audiences and submit to film festivals. This is something that has been discussed for the future of the Icelandic DRUMICE work.
I planned and conducted my first field campaign for my PhD research, navigating ever-changing Covid-19 regulations, which took place out in the Swiss Alps. Two glacier catchments were visited - Triftgletscher and Glacier d'Otemma - to extract bedrock with a hammer and chisel from throughout the basin, which I would then use to apply a method of thermoluminescence thermochronometry to reveal spatio-temporal differences in glacial erosion across the landscape.
Fortunate to experience perfect weather conditions, the work involved hiking long distances over large elevation changes to reach different parts of the catchment for a wide sampling range. Upon reaching mountain refuges for the night, we got a fair few odd looks from the small number of tourists present when we unloaded 20kg of rocks from our bags!
You can watch a short cinematic video I created of the stunning environment at Triftgletscher at the bottom of the page.
The following year I returned to the Swiss Alps, primarily to assist with the research of some colleagues, though I also took the opportunity to grab a few more samples from the high summit regions of the Glacier d'Otemma.
The majority of time on this field campaign was spent doing UAV survey flights of the proglacial fluvial floodplains alongside installation and data collection from instruments to monitor the discharge and suspended sediment concentration of proglacial rivers. The work took place at Steingletscher, Oberaargletscher and Findelengletscher.
You can see a short video of the fieldwork I created at the bottom of the page.
In March of 2023 I joined a group of four other early career glaciologists on an expedition (DRUMICE) to the icecap of Hofsjökull in the remote interior of Iceland. We were there to conduct ground penetrating radar (GPR) surveys of drumlins emerging from the icecap. The work involved many days of walking around the proglacial area and on top of the icecap itself, dragging around GPR instruments to gather data on the internal structure of proglacial drumlins, as well as the presence and orientation of subglacial drumlins.
We were dropped in the field over 100km away from the nearest settlement and left on our own to camp out in frigid winter conditions - with temperatures down to -20°C and persistently strong winds.
Despite our main GPR system malfunctioning on the first day (typical!), we managed to gather some good data with the two other systems we had with us and will be doing the bulk of processing and analysis this summer (2024). This is an ongoing project led by Dr Remy Veness that I intend to remain a part of.
The field campaign was funded by the Mount Everest Foundation, British Society for Geomorphology and Austrian Alpine Club (the latter of which I was personally responsible for securing). We were also supported by Alpkit who provided the excellent tents for us at a greatly discounted rate.
A short video of the fieldwork which I created is at the bottom of the page.
Some notable previous fieldwork experiences as a physical geography undergraduate at the University of Southampton and afterwards:
Mont Blanc Massif (2016) - self-planned and conducted fieldwork for my undergraduate dissertation investigating the influences of glacier hydrological connectivity on retreat rate for the Mer de Glace and Glacier de Bionnassay. Involved proglacial river monitoring (discharge and suspended sediment) and UAV surveys.
Swiss Alps (2016) - 3rd year field course to Arolla. Studied the thermal conductivity of debris cover on the Haut Glacier d'Arolla with a meteo station and temperature probes deployed on the glacier.
Barton on Sea (2017) - 3rd year module using different field surveying techniques (UAV, terrestrial laser scanner, dGPS) to gather and compare data on a section of rotationally slumping cliff on the south coast of England.
Seychelles (2017) - Despite my main interest being mountain geomorphology and the cryosphere, I have a big soft spot for marine biology and have a PADI Advanced Open Water Diver qualification. After graduating I went off to the Seychelles for a month of volunteering work with the Marine Conservation Society Seychelles (MCSS). Here I helped with several things, including species monitoring programmes (hawksbill and green turtles, yellow belly mud terrapins), beach profile monitoring and restoration schemes, habitat classification, preparation of suitable enclosures for the adoption of mistreated giant tortoises, and providing information for visiting tourists. I also discussed with the team how they could potentially use their new UAVs for repeated surveying and monitoring of things like beach profiles and forest/habitat changes.