News

Congratulations are due to Tom O’Donoghue, who has been awarded a Personal Chair, and to Martin Solan & David Green, who have both been promoted to Senior Lecturer. These promotions take effect on 1/8/07.

Amy Taylor Amy was appointed in May 2005 to work as a Research Assistant on Phase 2 of the Project, which is funded by Scottish Natural Heritage, to assess the rates and causes of changes along the coastline of selected beach and dune systems in Scotalnd. The main technique is to generate and to compare multi-data digital terrain models (DTMs) derived from high quality aerial photographs from different dates. The project is also required to provide 3-D fly-throughs to help in the visualization of these changes. Amy graduated in 2002 from the University of Glasgow with a BSc. Honours Degree in Topographic Science. Since 2002 she has been working offshore in the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico as a Hydrographic Surveyor.

From November 2006, she has also been responsible for precise surveys of Aberdeen beach using high accuracy GPS and the new Argos system.

Tom O’Donoghue (Engineering) His current research projects include:

1. The £200k Aberdeen Beach Coastal Monitoring Project (ABCoMP) funded by Aberdeen City Council. Other investigators on the project are Bobby Wright (Geography and Environment) and Bill Ritchie, with Amy Taylor as Research Assistant. The main aim is to establish an ARGUS coastal monitoring system for Aberdeen Beach. Setup and testing of the system will benefit from on-going GPS surveys of the beach carried out every two weeks throughout the project, which runs from June 2006 to Nov 2008.
2. The £285k Experimental and Numerical Modelling Study of Swash Zone Hydrodynamics and Sediment Transport in collaboration with the University of Nottingham, funded by EPSRC. Tom's co-investigator on this project is Dubravka Pokrajac (Engineering). The project uses laboratory experiments to study fundamental aspects of swash flow hydrodynamics and sediment transport on beaches and develop a swash numerical model based on the nonlinear shallow water wave equations. It runs from Feb 2006 - Jan 2009

Martin Solan's (Oceanlab) research involves the use of manipulative laboratory and field experiments to understand species interactions, macro-invertebrate bioturbation and the development of concepts of biodiversity and ecosystem function in marine sediment systems. He is an associate member of the EU funded MarBEF (Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function), a contributing participant of the NSF funded BioMERGE (Biotic Mechanisms of Ecosystem Regulation in the Marine Environment), and has been involved with several NCEAS (USA) workshops on biodiversity-ecosystem function. He has published widely, including contributions in Nature and Science. He is a subject editor of Marine Biology Research and has reviewed scientific proposals for NSF (USA), NERC (UK), The Royal Society of New Zealand, and the European Commission (Europe).

His Sediment Profile Imaging Camera has been completed under the European STREP proposal and has been used in several coastal locations in the UK and Europe. Further details of his research can be found at: http://www.oceanlab.abdn.ac.uk.

Alastair Dawson, Professorial Research Fellow, has had substantial media attention due to his expertise in tsunamis arising from his earlier work on the Storrega subaqueous landslide. He has recently submitted a research funding bid to the Arts and Humanities Funding Council. The project is concerned with Holocene geoarchaeology and coastal change in the Orkney Isles with particular focus on early Holocene submerged Mesolithic landscapes (with C Wickham-Jones (Orkney) and S Dawson). A short fieldwork was completed during 2006 by CWJ, SD and AD, where sediment coring of several freshwater lochs was undertaken (AD).

Alastair and Bill Ritchie have continued their research on the coastal geomorphology of the Menie Estate, Balmedie, NE Scotland in respect of the Trump golf course complex proposal.

Alastair's recent publications include:

• Dawson , A.G. 2006 Classics in Physical Geography revisited: Sissons, J.B., Smith, D.E. and R A Cullingford 1966 Lateglacial and postglacial shorelines in SE Scotland, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 39, 9-18 in Progress in Physical Geography (2006), 30, 4, 531-35.
• Dawson, A.G., Dawson, S. and Bondevik, S. 2006 Late Holocene tsunami at Basta Voe, Yell, Shetland Isles, Scottish Geographical Journal, 122, 100-108.

Lynda Kingham was invited to Louisiana to meet with LSU and State Officials to explain the Shetland expertise in wildlife rescue and response within oil spill contingency planning.

David Green (Geography) is organising COASTGIS in Aberdeen in September. His chairmanship and management of Littoral 2004 in 2004 produced an excellent high profile conference.

David Bailey After completing his scholarship, David was successful in obtaining employment at the University of Glasgow and will continue to keep in contact with the Institute in Aberdeen.

William Ritchie continues to promote the wider interests of the Institute, essential within our European partnership programme, COREPOINT and CoPraNet.

New research work continues, especially with Alastair Dawson and Tom O'Donoghue (see above). Much time has been occupied as a result of Chairmanship of SARF (Scottish Aquaculture Research Forum) and various committees of the Scottish Executive on CZM and Marine Spatial Planning.

Additional work is ongoing with the World Maritime University in Malmo, Sweden as a Visiting and Adjunct Professor. Three international conferences are also in advanced planning stages, i.e. at St Fergus (with Lynda Kingham) on the Precise Measurement of Coastal Changes, in Malmo on the Effects of Climate Change on World Maritime Transport and Activities, and with SARF on Research & Development Output in Aquaculture. There is also an initiative to work further with the Western Isles Council as a follow-up to CoPraNet and COREPOINT work to develop strategic research on machair as a resource in need of careful protection and management.

As an aftermath of the massive storm damage in the Uists in January 2005 both Bill Ritchie and Alastair Dawson are actively engaged with assessment and advice to Western Islands Council and other bodies on the extent and possible need for protection of these vulnerable Atlantic shorelines. This tragic event had given added impetus to our pre-existing machair study research which included a large SNH grant to quantify and monitor coastal erosion in this region and elsewhere.

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