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Biography
Des Walling has a BA in Geography and PhD in Geography (Hydrology), from the University of Exeter. He was formerly Assistant Lecturer, Lecturer, Reader in Physical Geography and Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Exeter, before being appointed Reardon Smith Professor of Geography in 1998.
Research interests
Des Walling leads the Hydrology and Earth Surface Processes Research Group . His current research interests lie in the fields of erosion and sediment yield, water quality, hydrology, and fluvial geomorphology .
Des Walling's main research activity focuses on land erosion and the suspended sediment loads of rivers. Work in this field is currently being undertaken in local catchments in the Exe basin, in other UK river basins and overseas (Zambia, Belize, China, Russia, France, Poland and Greenland). In addition, this interest extends to world rivers more generally and to global patterns of erosion and sediment yield and their response to environmental change. Catchment studies have focused on establishing sediment budgets and quantifying sediment sources, sinks and outputs. This work has necessitated the development of specialised field instrumentation and measurement techniques and particular emphasis has been placed on the use of environmental radionuclides (i.e. Caesium-137, Lead-210 and Beryllium-7) as sediment tracers. Exeter has one of the best equipped gamma spectrometry laboratories for environmental measurements in the world (15 HPGe detectors) and is in the forefront of developing the application of environmental radionuclides to quantifying erosion and deposition rates in catchments and associated sediment delivery ratios, for establishing overbank deposition rates on river floodplains and for fingerprinting suspended sediment sources. Such information is central to the establishment of catchment sediment budgets.
A broad interest in the field of suspended sediment transport also embraces studies of the effective grain size of suspended sediment, the relationship between source and sediment properties. sediment-associated nutrient transport and problems of measuring suspended sediment yields. In addition to a desire to develop an improved understanding of catchment sediment budgets and the behaviour of fine sediment in fluvial systems, attention is also given to the increasing range of environmental problems associated with fine sediment transport in fluvial systems. These include siltation of salmonid spawning gravels, degradation of aquatic habitats, the fate of sediment- associated nutrients and contaminants in fluvial systems and the role of river floodplains as nutrient and contaminant sinks. This work has involved collaboration with a number of UK organisations and agencies, including the EA, MAFF and ADAS.
Recent and current research has attracted substantial funding from a number of sources including NERC, MAFF, DFID, the Environment Agency, Raleigh International and the European Union. NERC funding has included involvement in both the LOIS and Environmental Diagnostics Community Programmes and Exeter is one of the three UK University members associated with the recent ¡ê2 million JIF Award for instrumentation of lowland catchments (JIF LOCAR). Six Postdoctoral Fellows are currently working with Des Walling on these externally funded projects. Currently supervised research students are largely supported by NERC and recent and current projects include investigations of:
Close collaborative links are maintained with researchers in China, Canada, Poland, Russia, France, Spain, Italy, Israel, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Jordan, Morocco, Brazil and Denmark.
Des Walling is also heavily involved in national and international scientific activities related to his research area. He is a past President of the International Commission on Continental Erosion and the International Association for Sediment Water Science and is currently co-ordinator of Project 2.1 of the Fifth Phase of the UNESCO International Hydrological Programme which deals with land use and erosion. He is also a co-coordinator of the IGBP-PAGES LUCIFS project, which aims to investigate land use and climate impacts on fluvial systems over the period since the development of agriculture, a member of the Bureau of IAHS, a member of the IGBP Water Group and a member of the Advisory Council of the International Research and Training Centre in Erosion and Sedimentation in Beijing, China. Nationally, he is a member of the UK National Committee for the IGBP and a member of the Steering Committee of the recently launched NERC LOCAR Community Research Programme. He is an author or editor of 22 books and he has published more than 320 scientific papers and contributions to edited volumes.
Teaching responsibilities
On study leave for 2000-01 session.
GEO2303 Research in Physical Geography
Administrative responsibilities
Deputy Head of School
Director of Research for School of Geography and Archaeology
Chair of School Research Committee
Leader Hydrology and Earth Surface Processes Research Group
Member School Resources and Advisory Committee
Convenor of Physical Geography Laboratory and Workshop Group
Vehicles co-ordinator
NERC liaison
Physical Geography Postgraduate Admissions
Postgraduate Prospectus
Academic Staffing Committee
Selected recent publications
Walling, D.E. (2000) Linking land use, erosion and sediment yields in river basins. Hydrobiologia 410 , 223-240.
Walling, D.E. and Woodward, J.C. (2000) Effective particle size characteristics of fluvial suspended sediment transported by lowland British rivers. In The Role of Erosion and Sediment Transport in Nutrient and Contaminant Transfer . IAHS Publication No. 263, 129-139.
Walling, D.E., Golosov, V.N., Kvasnikova, E.V. and Vandecasteele, C. (2000) Radioecological aspects of soil pollution in small catchments. Eurasian Soil Science 33 , 776-784.
Walling, D.E., Owens, P.N., Waterfall, B.D., Leeks, G.J.L. and Wass, P.D. (2000) Particle size characteristics of fluvial suspended sediment in the Humber and Tweed catchments, UK. The Science of the Total Environment 251/252 , 205-222.
Walling, D.E., He, Q. and Blake, W.H. (2000) River floodplains as phosphorus sinks. In: The Role of Erosion and Sediment Transport in Nutrient and Contaminant Transfer . IAHS Publication No. 263, 211-218.
He, Q., and Walling, D.E. (2000) Calibration of a field-portable gamma detector to obtain in situ measurements of the 137 Cs inventories of cultivated soils and floodplain sediments. Applied Radiation and Isotopes 52 , 865-872.
Carton, J., Walling, D.E., Owens, P.N. and Leeks, G.J.L. (2000) Spatial and temporal variability of the chromium content of suspended and flood-plain sediment in the River Aire, Yorkshire, UK. In: The Role of Erosion and Sediment Transport in Nutrient and Contaminant Transfer . IAHS Publication No. 263, 219-226.
Droppo, I.G., Walling, D.E. and Ongley, E.D. (2000) The influence of floc size, density and porosity on sediment and contaminant transport. In: The Role of Erosion and Sediment Transport in Nutrient and Contaminant Transfer . IAHS Publication No. 263, 141-147.
Foster, I.D.L., Mighall, T.M., Wotton, C., Owens, P.N. and Walling, D.E. (2000) Evidence for medieval soil erosion in the South Hams region of Devon, UK. The Holocene 10 , 261-271.
Golosov, V.N., Walling, D.E., Kvasnikova, E.V., Stukin, E.D., Nikolaev. A.N. and Panin, A.V. (2000) Application of a field-portable scintillation detector for studying the distribution of 137 Cs inventories in a small basin in central Russia. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 48 , 79-94.
Golosov, V., Walling, D.E. and Panin, A. (2000) Post-fallout redistribution of Chernobyl-derived caesium-137 in small catchments within the Lokna River basin, Russia. In: The Role of Erosion and Sediment Transport in Nutrient and Contaminant Transfer . IAHS Publication No.263, 49-57.
Hasholt, B., Walling, D.E. and Owens, P.N. (2000) Sedimentation in arctic proglacial lakes, Mittivakkat Glacier, southeast Greenland. Hydrological Processes 14 , 679-99.
Okunishi, K., Walling, D.E. and Saito, T. (2000) A hydrological model of the mobilisation of fine suspended sediment from slopes. Transactions Japanese Geomorphological Union 21-3 , 243-60.
Russell, M.A, Walling, D.E. and Hodgkinson, R.A. (2000) Appraisal of a simple sampling device for collecting time-integrated fluvial suspended sediment samples. In: The Role of Erosion and Sediment Transport in Nutrient and Contaminant Transfer . IAHS Publication No.263, 119-127.
Van der Perk, M., Jetten, V.G., Karssenberg, D., He, Q., Walling, D.E., Laptev, G.V., Voitsekhovitch, O.V., Svetlichnyi, A.A., Slavik, O., Linnik, V.G., Korobova, E.M., Kivva, S. and Zheleznyak, M. (2000) Assessment of spatial redistribution of Chernobyl-derived radiocaesium within catchments using GIS-embedded models. In: The Role of Erosion and Sediment Transport in Nutrient and Contaminant Transfer . IAHS Publication No. 263, 277-284.
Webb, B.W., Phillips, J.M. and Walling, D.E. (2000) A new approach to deriving ¡®best-estimate' chemical fluxes from rivers draining the LOIS study area.. The Science of the Total Environment 251/252 , 45-54.
Walling, D.E. (1999) Using fallout radionuclides in investigations of contemporary overbank sedimentation on the floodplains of British rivers. In: Floodplains: Interdisciplinary Approaches , S.B. Marriott and J. Alexander (eds.). Geological Society, London, Special Publication no. 163. 41-59.
Walling, D.E. and Amos, C.M. (1999) Source, storage and mobilisation of fine sediment in a chalk stream system. Hydrological Processes 13 , 323-40.
Walling, D.E. and He, Q. (1999) Using fallout lead-210 measurements to estimate soil erosion on cultivated land, Soil Science Society of America Journal 63 , 1404-1412.
Walling, D.E. and He, Q. (1999) Improved models for estimating soil erosion rates from 137 Cs measurements. Journal of Environmental Quality 28 , 611-622.
Walling, D.E. and He, Q. (1999) Changing rates of overbank sedimentation on the floodplains of British rivers over the past 100 years. In: Fluvial Processes and Environmental Change. A.G. Brown and T.A. Quine (eds.). Wiley, Chichester. 207-222.
Walling, D.E. and Fang, D. (1999) Longer-term variability of sediment transport to the oceans. In Hydrological and Geochemical Processes in Large Scale River Basins . Proceedings of the Manaus Symposium, November, 1999 (CD). Brasilia, HIBAM.
Wallling, D.E., He, Q. and Blake, W. (2000) Use of 7 Be and 137 Cs measurements to document short- and medium-term rates of water-induced soil erosion on agricultural land. Water Resources Research 35 (12), 3865-3874.
Walling, D.E., Owens, P.N. and Leeks, G.J.L.(1999) Fingerprinting suspended sediment sources in the catchment of the River Ouse, Yorkshire, UK. Hydrological Processes 13 , 955-975.
Walling, D.E., Owens, P.N. and Leeks, G.J.L.(1999) Rates of contemporary overbank sedimentation and sediment storage on the floodplains of the main channel systems of the Yorkshire Ouse and the River Tweed, UK. Hydrological Processes 13 , 993-1009.
Phillips, J. M. and Walling, D.E. (1999) The particle size characteristics of fine-grained channel deposits in the River Exe Basin, Devon, UK. (1999) Hydrological Processes 13 , 1-19.
Blake, W.H., Walling, D.E. and He, Q. (1999) Fallout beryllium-7 as a tracer in soil erosion investigations. Applied Radiation and Isotopes 51 , 599-605.
Golosov, V.N., Walling, D.E., Panin, A.V., Stukin, E.D., Kvasnikova, E.V. and Ivanova, N.N. (1999) The spatial variability of Chernobyl-derived 137 Cs inventories in a small agricultural drainage basin in central Russia. Applied Radiation and Isotopes 51 , 341-352.
Owens, P.N., Walling, D.E. and Leeks G.J.L. (1999) Use of floodplain sediment cores to investigate recent historical changes in overbank sedimentation rates and sediment sources in the catchment of the River Ouse, Yorkshire, UK. Catena 36 , 21-47.
Owens, P.N., Walling, D.E. and Leeks, G.J.L. (1999) Deposition and storage of fine-grained sediment within the main channel system of the River Tweed, Scotland. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 24 , 1061-1076.
Phillips, J.M., Webb, B.W., Walling, D.E. and Leeks, G.J.L. (1999) Estimating the suspended sediment loads of rivers in the Lois study area using infrequent samples. Hydrological Processes 13 , 1035-1050.
Quine, T.A., Walling, D.E. and Zhang, X. (1999) Slope and gully response to agricultural activity in the Rolling Loess Plateau, China. In: Fluvial Processes and Environmental Change. A.G. Brown and T.A. Quine (eds.). Wiley, Chichester. 71-90.
Quine, T.A., Walling, D.E., Chakela, Q.K., Mandaringana, O.T. and Zhang, X. (1999) Rates and patterns of tillage and water erosion on terraces and contour strips: evidence from caesium-137. Catena 36 , 115-142.
Quine, T.A., Walling, D.E. and Zhang, X. (1999) Tillage erosion, water erosion and soil quality on cultivated terraces at Xifeng in the Loess Plateau, China. Land Degradation and Development 10 , 251-274.
Siggers, G.B., Bates, P.D., Anderson, M.G., Walling, D.E. and He, Q. (1999) A preliminary investigation of the integration of modelled floodplain hydraulics with estimates of overbank floodplain sedimentation derived from Pb-210 and Cs-137 measurements. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 24 , 211-231.
Trudgill, S.T., Walling, D.E. and Webb, B.W. (eds.) (1999) Water Quality: Processes and Quality, Wiley.
Zavoianu, I., Walling, D.E. and Serban, P. (eds.) (1999) Vegetation, Land Use and Erosion Processes , Institute of Geography, Romanian Academy, Bucharest.
Zhang, X., Walling, D.E. and He, Q. (1999) Simplified mass balance models for assessing soil erosion rates on cultivated land using caesium-137 measurements. Hydrological Sciences Journal 44, 33-45.
Valero-Garces B.L., Navas, A., Machin, J. and Walling, D.E. (1999) Sediment sources and siltation in mountain reservoirs: a case study from the Central Spanish Pyrenees. Geomorphology 28 , 23-41.
