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PEOPLE/PERSONALITIES
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WHO CONTRIBUTES IN
UNDERSTANDING THE EARTH
SYSTEM

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LUNA B. LEOPOLD
Luna Bergere Leopold (October 8, 1915 –
February 23, 2006) was a leading U.S.
geomorphologist and hydrologist, and son
of Aldo Leopold. He received a B.S. in Civil
Engineering from the University of
Wisconsin, Madison in 1936; an M.S. in
Physics-Meteorology from the University of
California, Los Angeles in 1944; and a Ph.D.
in Geology from Harvard University in 1950.
CHRIS BOULTON
Chris Boulton
He study early warning signals of tipping
points in the climate system. These are
huge unexpected responses in
subsystems which can have devastating
effects on future climate. Recently his
work has focused mainly on the Amazon
rainforest.
 After completing my MMath in the
Mathematics department at Exeter in
2011, he stayed on for my PhD, switching
to Geography, as part of the Earth
System Science research group. The topic
'Early warning signals of environmental
tipping points' allowed me to apply my
math skills to the real world, specifically
climate science. Throughout his PhD, he
was also involved in the teaching
programming skills and statistics to
undergraduate bioscience and geography
students.
Broad research specialisms:
 Mathematics
 Statistics
 Climate Modelling
 Time Series Analysis
 Dynamical Systems
STEPHEN BECKETT
Currently researching the ecology and
evolution of marine microbial systems, in
particular the interactions and coevolution
of bacteria and their viruses (aka. phage).
Stephen Beckett is interested about how
local interactions and mechanisms can lead
to global patterns. He use mathematical
and computational tools guided by
ecological principles to guide my work with
the Earth System Science group.
Before coming to Exeter he investigated the
role of pheromone signaling for foraging
pharaoh‘s ants (monomorium pharaonis),
which utilize attractive and repellent
pheromones. He also had an intern
placement working with the Computational
Science group at Microsoft Research on leaf
longevity models in defining global leaf
phenology biogeographic patterns.
Broad research specialisms:
 Mathematical ecology
 Computational ecology
 Theoretical ecology
 WILLIAM
RICHARD PELTIER
William Richard Peltier, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc) (born
1943), is a university professor of physics at the
University of Toronto. He is director of the
Centre for Global Change Science, principal
investigator of the Polar Climate Stability
Network , and the Scientific Director of Canada's
largest supercomputer centre, SciNet . He is a
fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the
American Geophysical Union.
His research interests include:
 Atmospheric and Oceanic Waves
 Turbulence Geophysical Fluid
Dynamics,
 Physics of the Planetary Interior, and
Planetary Climate.
HYWEL WILLIAMS
.

Hywel Williams
Work on various topics related to
ecology, evolution and the natural
environment. Most of this involves
modelling and simulation, from a complex
systems perspective. Recently he have
been focusing on marine viruses,
coevolution, and behavioural economics
related to climate change.
JAMES CLARK
JAMES CLARK
a researcher at Plymouth Marine
Laboratory, and an Honorary Fellow at the
University of Exeter. He have a general interest in
marine ecology, and in controls on marine
biogeochemical cycles. In particular, he’s interested
in developing more mechanistic models of organism
physiology, which may better constrain the likely
response of the marine ecosystem to environmental
change.
He works in the Palaeo Fire Lab and
will be running experiments for the
ECOFLAM project. He have also
worked on a range of other projects,
mostly using lake sediments to
reconstruct environmental history.
Alexandra Navrotsky is a physical chemist in the
field of nanogeoscience. She is an elected member
of the United States National Academy of Sciences
(NAS). She was a board member of the Earth
Sciences and Resources division of the NAS from
1995 until 2000. In 2005, she was awarded the Urey
Medal,by the European Association of Geochemistry.
In 2006, she was awarded the Harry H. Hess Medal,
by the American Geophysical Union.She is currently
the director of NEAT ORU (Nanomaterials in
Environment, Agriculture, and Technology Organized
Research Unit), a primary program in
nanogeoscience. She is Distinguished Professor at
University of California, Davis.
 Since 1997, she has built a unique high
temperature calorimetry facility. She has also
designed and enhanced the instrumentation.
Navrotsky introduced and applied the method for
measuring the energetics of crystalline oxides of
glasses, amorphous, nanophase material, porous
materials of hydrous phases and carbonates also
more recently nitrides and oxynitrides. Obtaining
the thermo chemical data is used to understand
the compatibility and reactivity of materials in
technological and geological application. The
energetics provides insight into chemical bonding,
order-disorder reactions, and phase transitions.
 Navrotsky's calorimetry has also been
used in providing thermo chemical data for
a variety of perovskite-related phases which
has major consequences for convection and
evolution on a planetary scale. One of
Navrotsky's works has shown that many
zeolitic and mesoporous phases have
energies only slightly higher than those of
their stable dense polymorphs. The energy
is associated with the presence or absence
of strained bond angles not with the
density.
 CLAIRE BELCHER

Claire is an Earth scientist specializing in the study of

natural fires in the Earth system. Her research seeks to
understand how evolutionary changes to ecosystems and
wildfires have influenced the Earth system in the past, and
integrates knowledge from cutting-edge modern
experimental methods into studies of Earth’s geological past.
Her core research aims to understand the flammability of
Earth’s ecosystems where she considers flammability over a
range of timescales, from instantaneous global change such
as asteroid impacts, to global warming events occurring over
10 Kyr timescales, and variations in atmospheric oxygen over
million-year timescales.
Broad Research
Specialisms:
 Fire and the Earth
System over long
geological
timescales
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