Author: Lucy Moore Fuller

DTP: Cambridge ESS

Profile

Hi, I am Nora, a marine ecologist and PhD student with keen interest in kelp forest community structure. I am based at the Marine Biology Association in Plymouth in Dan Smale’s group (BEECH – Benthic Ecosystems and Environmental Change) and a student of the University of Southampton (INSPIRE DTP, cohort 1).

Please follow my work on ResearchGate and Twitter @nora_mare).

Present work:
My research is focused on the effects of climate change stressors (especially ocean warming) on foundation species such as kelps and their associated flora and fauna community. I will explore resulting physiological responses of kelp to changing conditions on both individuals and population based levels, as well as the impacts on the entire ecosystems.

During my first year I collected data of the understudied kelp Sacchoriza polyschides (commonly known as ‘Furbellows’), which is a warm-temperate kelp and might expand its distribution range in the NE Atlantic and increase its population size due to ocean warming. This year, I will start multifactorial mesocosm experiments with “global warming winner” vs. “global warming loser” species. I am also very interested in ecosystem services and the value kelps provide for the ecosystem, the environment and our society.

Past projects:
In 2018 I graduated from the University of Rostock, Germany, in Marine Biology (MSc) after completing Biological Science (BSc) in 2015. My master thesis focused on effects of ocean warming on grazer-algae interactions as part of the GAME project (collaboration with the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany, and the Universidad Católica del Norte in Coquimbo, Chile). You can read a blog post about my part within the GAME project here.

I have practical experience from several sea-going scientific expeditions (North Sea and Baltic Sea) as well as working experience (field and lab based) in Chile, Canada and New Zealand.

I am PhD student based in the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, studying the effects of climate change on global fluvial flooding and investigating how flood models can be improved by use of regionalisation methods. My research is jointly funded by the Faculty of Science of the University of East Anglia and the Amar-Franses and Foster-Jenkins Trust. I am supervised by Dr. Ing. Yi He, Prof. Timothy Osborn and Prof. Andrés Bárdossy (based at the University of Stuttgart, Germany).

The aim of my PhD project is the development of a regionalised global hydrological model to assess the impacts of climate change on flood risks. To date, only a handful of global hydrological models to simulate long-term water balance and to simulate streamflow have been developed. These models often suffer from a lack of regionalised model parameters which renders their simulation output somewhat unreliable. With my work I aim to address this shortcoming of existing models and to thus increase the reliability of flooding projections under changing climatic conditions.

Prior to working on my PhD, I completed a MSc in Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia and spent 4 years working as a research associate. My research focused on climate change impacts, primarily on agricultural yield and biodiversity but also on drought and flooding. Among others, I contributed to the HELIX (high-end climate impacts and extremes) and the EUCalc (European Calculator) project.

Natasha is a 1^st year PhD student at Newcastle University, investigating biodiversity responses to infrastructure expansion in the Heart of Borneo, Brunei Darussalam.

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Twitter

DTP: INSPIRE

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nancy_c_walker

PhD Project Title:  Modelling the mechanisms of olive dieback caused by Xylella fastidiosa biofilms

Supervisory Team: Prof. Tiina Roose (UoS), Dr. Steven White (UKCEH), Dr. Maria Saponari (CNR Bari)

Qualifications:

First Class MMath (with Honours), University of Warwick

Dissertation – Joint Optimisation of Spatial and Temporal Derivatives for Simulations of Varying Amplitude Waves (supervised by Dr Ed Brambley)

Research interests:

• Image-based modelling
• Numerical methods for PDEs
• Fluid Dynamics