Dr Andrew Thomas

Senior Lecturer
BSc Physical Geography (Swansea)
PhD (Swansea)
Photograph of Dr Andrew Thomas.

Contact

Email: ant23@aber.ac.uk
Office: E3
Phone: +44 (0)1970 622 781
Fax: +44 (0)1970 622 659

Teaching Areas

Module coordinator for:

  • EA20110 Environmental Management

Contributes to:

  • EAM1120 Advanced Research Skills
  • GG10610 Earth Surface Environments
  • GG22420 Geography Fieldwork
  • GG22110 Level 2 Geography Tutorial

Research

Group Affiliation

  • Climate Change Consortium for Wales (Aberystwyth director, from January 2013)
  • Environment and Society Research Group (Co-director)
  • Quaternary Environmental Change Research Group

Research Interests

Drylands, soil carbon, soil CO2 efflux, biological soil crusts

Andrew’s expertise is in dryland environments, particularly in the Kalahari of southern Africa. He is interested in predicting the effects of climatic and land use change on soils and the carbon cycle. Funding from NERC (CEH/L/027/2007­) and The Leverhulme Trust (RF/4/RFG/2009/0263) allowed him to establish how grazing intensity, rainfall and temperature affect land-atmosphere fluxes of CO2 across the Kalahari. Much of his work has focused on biological soil crusts and their influence over soil erodibility, moisture and nutrient content in drylands. Recently this has taken him to the Makgadikgadi salt pans in northern Botswana, where he has investigated biological and chemical uptake of carbon in hyper-saline and alkaline soils. His current research is quantifying spatial differences in soil respiration and microbial activity in the Kalahari, and determining the relative roles of fungi and bacteria in carbon cycles (The Leverhulme Trust, F/00 426/H). The links between soils, ecosystem services and rural livelihoods in rural southern African environments are a key aspect of his work (NERC NE/I003320/1).

Biography

Andrew is a graduate of Swansea University, where he obtained a Geography degree and Ph.D. His doctoral research looked at the impact of fire on soil erosion, slope hydrology and nutrient losses in the eucalyptus and pine forests of central Portugal. He has held lectureship positions at Reading (1997), Salford (1998) and Manchester Metropolitan (2002) Universities where he was made Reader in Physical Geography in 2011. He was awarded the Royal Geographical Society’s Peter Fleming award in 2008 and a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship in 2010. He joined the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences at Aberystwyth in October 2012.

Staff Publications

Forthcoming

  1. Thomas, A.D., Elliott, D., Griffith, T. Forthcoming. Pastoralism and soil quality in the Kalahari. In, Brearley, F.Q. and Thomas, A.D. (eds). 2013. Land-Use Change Impacts on Soil Processes in Tropical and Savannah Ecosystems. CABI. Wallingford.
  2. Brearley, F.Q. and Thomas, A.D. (eds). 2013. Land-Use Change Impacts on Soil Processes in Tropical and Savannah Ecosystems. CABI. Wallingford.

2012

  1. Thomas, A.D., 2012. Impact of grazing intensity on seasonal variations of soil organic carbon and soil CO2 efflux in two semi-arid grasslands in southern Botswana. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 367, 3076-3086. DOI
  2. Thomas, A.D., Hoon, S.R., Dougill, A.J., Mairs, H., 2012. Soil Organic Carbon in Deserts:  Examples from the Kalahari. In, Mol, L., and Sternberg, T., Eds. Changing Deserts: Integrating Environments, People and Challenges.  Pp. 40-60. White Horse Press, Cambridge.
  3. Stringer, L.C., Dougill, A.J., Thomas, A.D., Spracklen, D.V., Chesterman, S., Ifejika Speranza, C., Rueff, H., Riddell, M., Williams, M., Beedy, T., Abson, D.J., Klintenberg, P., Syampungani, S., Powell, P., Palmer, A.R., Seely, M.K., Mkwambisi, D.D., Falcao, M., Sitoe, A., Ross, S., Kopolo, G., 2012. Challenges and opportunities in linking carbon sequestration, livelihoods and ecosystem service provision in drylands, Environmental Science and Policy, 19-20, 121-135. DOI

2011

  1. Thomas, A.D., Hoon, S.R., Dougill, A.J. 2011. Soil respiration at five sites along the Kalahari Transect: Effects of temperature, precipitation pulses and biological soil crust cover. Geoderma, 167-168, 284-294. DOI
  2. Ravi, S., D'Odorico, P., Breshears, D.D., Field, J.P., Goudie, A.S., Huxman, T.E., Li, J., Okin, G.S., Swap, R.J., Thomas, A.D., Van Pelt, S., Whicker, J.J., Zobeck, T.M., 2011. Aeolian processes and the biosphere. Reviews of Geophysics, 49, RG3001. DOI
  3. Mager, D.M., Thomas, A.D., 2011. The role of extracellular polysaccharides from cyanobacterial soil crusts in dryland surface processes: A review. Journal of Arid Environments, 75, 91-97. DOI
  4. Menon, M., Yuan, Q., Jia, X., Dougill, A. J., Hoon, S. R., Thomas, A. D., Williams, R. A., 2011. Assessment of physical and hydrological properties of biological soil crusts using x-ray microtomography and modelling. Journal of Hydrology, 397, 47-54. DOI

2010

  1. Thomas, A.D., Hoon, S.R., 2010. Carbon dioxide fluxes from biologically-crusted Kalahari Sands after simulated wetting. Journal of Arid Environments, 74, 131-139. DOI

2009

  1. Hoon, S. R., Thomas, A.D., Linton, P.E., 2009. Design and development of an in-situ closed chamber for quantification of soil photosynthesis and respiration. Geographical Research, 47(1), 71-82. DOI

2008

  1. Thomas, A.D., Hoon, S. R., Linton, P.E., 2008. Carbon dioxide fluxes from cyanobacteria crusted soils in the Kalahari. Applied Soil Ecology, 39, 254-263. DOI
  2. Chappell, A., Warren, A., O'Donoghue, A., Robinson, A., Thomas, A.D., Bristow, C. 2008. The implications for dust emission modeling of spatial and vertical variations in horizontal dust flux and particle size in the Bodélé Depression, Northern Chad. Journal of Geophysical Research, 113, D04214. DOI

2007

  1. Linton, P.E., Shotbolt, L., Thomas, A.D., 2007. Microbial communities in long-term heavy metal contaminated ombrotrophic peats. Water Air and Soil Pollution, 186, 97-113. DOI
  2. Thomas, A.D., Dougill, A.J., 2007. Spatial and temporal distribution of cyanobacterial soil crusts in the Kalahari: implications for soil surface properties. Geomorphology, 85, 17-29. DOI
  3. Heritage, G.L., Thomas, A.D., 2007. Institutional bias and the degree class system. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 31, 1-13.

2006

  1. Shotbolt, L., Hutchinson S.M., Thomas, A.D., 2006. Sediment stratigraphy in small reservoirs in the Southern Pennine uplands, UK and their use for reconstructing catchment and atmospheric heavy metal fluxes. Journal of Paleolimnology, 35, 305-322. DOI
  2. Thomas, A. D., Dougill, A. J., 2006. Distribution and characteristics of cyanobacterial soil crusts in the Molopo Basin, southern Africa. Journal of Arid Environments, 64, 270-283. DOI
  3. Shotbolt, L., Thomas, A.D., 2006. Heavy metal pollution in upland catchments in the UK. Geography Review 19(5), 32-36

2005

  1. Berkeley, A., Thomas, A.D., Dougill, A.J., 2005. Cyanobacterial soil crusts and woody shrub canopies in Kalahari rangelands. African Journal of Ecology, 43, 137-145.
  2. Shotbolt, L., Thomas A.D., Hutchinson, S.M., 2005. The use of reservoir sediments as environmental archives of catchment inputs & atmospheric pollution. Progress in Physical Geography, 29(3), 337-361. DOI

 

Conference Presentations

Thomas, A.D., 2011. Effects of temperature, moisture and land use on CO2 efflux in cyanobacteria-crusted soils. 12th European Ecological Federation Congress, 25-29 September 2011, Ávila, Spain

Thomas, A.D., Hoon, S.R., Dougill, A.J., 2010. A revised Q10 model of soil respiration response to temperature, moisture & light on biologically-crusted soils along the Kalahari Transect. Biological Soil Crusts in Ecosystems:  Diversity, Ecology & Management, Zellingen-Retzbach, Germany Aug, 2010.

Thomas, A.D., Hoon, S.R., Dougill, A.J, Mairs, H., 2010. Soil Respiration along the Kalahari Transect. First Oxford Interdisciplinary Desert Conference, University of Oxford, April 2010

Thomas, A.D., Hoon, S.R., Dougill, A.J, Mairs, H., Tucker, S., 2009.The magnitude & source of soil organic carbon respired after simulated rainfall in the Kalahari. International Geophysical Union COMLAND conference on Land Degradation. Magdeburg, Germany, Sept 2009.

Thomas, A.D., Hoon, S.R., 2008. Simulated rainfall pulses and carbon dioxide fluxes from Kalahari Sands. 3rd Southern Deserts Conference. Northern Cape, South Africa, Sept 2008.

Thomas, A.D., Linton, P.E., Hoon, S.R., 2008. Carbon dioxide fluxes in cyanobacterial soil crusts from the Kalahari. Society for General Microbiology, Edinburgh, April 2008.