DoctorSophie Horton

Sophie is a hydrologist and coastal geomorphologist, integrating the conveyance of sediment and nutrients through the fluvial system into the coastal margin with the longer-term considerations of landscape trajectory through the lens of shore platforms and marine terrace sequences. Sophie’s research interests are in the contemporary processes that govern sediment transport and mobilisation primarily as the suspended and dissolved flux in rivers in high standing islands, and on hard rock coastlines in neo-tectonic settings. She is particularly interested in event-scale processes of denudation, weathering, and erosion in mountain environments and at the coast, framed around the concept of ki uta ki tai that recognises the intrinsic links between mountains and coastal systems. Within these environments Sophie also works on agricultural land use impacts on nitrate and bacterial contaminants and the mobilisation through surface and subsurface pathways. Methodologically, her work draws on geochemical techniques to trace sediment origins, field-based experiments measuring hydrodynamics and transport capacity, and investigation of how different wave spectra drive geomorphic work.