Dr Adam Ward, Associate Professor, Paul H. O’Neill
School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University
Environmental scientist Dr. Adam Ward from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, will be with us at UoB from December 2021 to October 2022 as a Fulbright Scholar. Dr Ward specializes in quantifying the transport of water, energy, and pollutants through hydrological landscapes, and the ecological implications of these fluxes.
Dr Ward’s research focuses on hydrological connections between streams, their landscapes, and their aquifers as a control on biogeochemical processes and ecosystem function, particularly the transport and fate of compounds in the environment. Specific interests include transport of nutrients in agricultural landscapes, contaminants of emerging concern in streams and wetlands, and carbon export from catchments.
His Watershed Hydrology & Engineering group uses a combination of field-based experiments, environmental observation, and numerical modelling to quantify couplings between physical, biological, and chemical systems. These skills are applied in interdisciplinary teams to predict water quantity, water quality, and ecosystem responses to changes in key drivers including land use change, land management activities, and climate change. Dr Ward is also interested in innovative teaching methods, having prototyped several service-learning activities and innovative teaching methods in his existing courses.
Dr Ward was previously a Vanguard Fellow with the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Birmingham. This visit focused on interdisciplinary science and environmental metagenomics in the river corridor, catalysing collaboration around hydrological and ecological processes in the river corridor.
During his time at the University of Birmingham, Dr Ward will be collaborating on research with Professor David Hannah and Professor Stefan Krause, examining and advancing predictive understanding of river corridor services and functions.