Mark Smith

@geomorphmark.bsky.social

Prof of Water Science and Health at Uni of Leeds. Geography - Hydrology - Malaria - Climate - Geomorphology. Dabble in icey stuff too. Oh and running... lots of running.

5 years monitoring this wonderful #beaver release site in #Yorkshire! Pulling together a wide range of evidence, we saw changes in hydrology (reduced peaks/baseflow increase), reduction in turbidity, and increased vertebrate species richness and aquatic plant diversity 🦫👍https://tinyurl.com/bdd9k2ke

A beaver dam emerging UAV image of a beaver pond

Lecturing tip #312. Increase student attention and engagement in the field by having a herd of cows stare at them throughout. Some adaptations needed to the Roger Stevens building perhaps…

A cow stares at a group of assembled students being talked to by a farmer

If your name’s not down… you’re not coming in. It’s great having #bees in our garden. Two ‘bouncers’ here guarding their entrance and bee-handling this unfortunate bee right across the garden. Perhaps ‘guard bees’ and ‘robber bees’ in action?

Another gorgeous field day surveying the Yorkshire #beavers. Laser scans, UAV surveys, a bit of dGPS where trees allowed and some iPad LiDAR surveys too. That's the 7th annual survey complete. Loads of activity... and look! I think I stumbled on a beaver workshop?

Trees and a beaver pondA beaver workshop?A pond and lots of felled trees

Lovely to see a release of beavers into the wild in England… especially today on my annual beaver survey day of the #Yorkshire Beavers. Amazing changes here over 6 years… maybe next year the change will be that the fences have gone!

A beaver dam and terrestrial laser scannerA UAV on the landing pad by a beaver lakeAnother beaver dam being scanned

Lovely to be part of group meetings in Lusaka for the CIHR healthcare access project. We planned local/national dissemination, pulling together key messages across this wonderfully friendly, diverse and international team. Ranging from flood modelling to focus groups to tackle this complex challenge

A group photo of the Access project teamA group photo of the Access project team

Scouting field sites for teaching in Tenerife… but no better way to cover lots of ground than a nice long run. This is my official reason for the run at least… 😬🌋🌲🏃‍♂️

Running on a trail at sunsetA cutting with laurel treesVolcano and clouds belowVolcano and lava field and a lovely pine tree

2024 was also a record for the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere. Water vapour is a powerful greenhouse gas and a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, amplifying the CO₂ induced warming. The increased levels of water in the atmosphere mean that heavy rainfall events become more severe.

Timeseries of atmospheric water vapour content, showing a record 2024

Great to finally hear the excellent podcast produced by the team that followed us into some remote Alaskan rivers this summer. Highly recommend THE WILD with Chris Morgan - we had an absolute blast with them looking at the changes in Glacier Bay National Park. open.spotify.com/show/6fjDWY0...

The Wild with Chris Morgan

Podcast · KUOW News and Information · "THE WILD with Chris Morgan" explores how nature survives and thrives alongside (and often despite) humans. Taking listeners across the Pacific Northwest and arou...

open.spotify.com

A new gigantic outburst flood from Catalina lake in East Greenland [Catalinadal, Renland, Scoresbysund]. total volume: 3.4 km3 peak discharge: ~7200 m3/s top-10 #GLOF in terms of both numbers. previous outburst 2013 I'm sending out a press release today about it. 🧪❄️ 🥼❄️ 1/x