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Dr Derek Clarke BSc PhD MCIHT

Visiting Researcher

Dr Derek Clarke is a Visiting Researcher in Water Resources within the School of Engineering, at the University of Southampton.

Derek’s research covers a range of topics in water use in the UK and overseas, including extreme events such as floods, water resources, shallow groundwater, soil-vegetation impacts on slope stability for roads and railways and the management of irrigation water delivery. Other interests include simulation of tides and floods in estuaries and the impact of sea level rise on flood risk, including sea level change implications for the UK’s New Nuclear Build programme.

He led the team that wrote the first Windows version of CROPWAT, the United Nations’ standard design software for irrigation water use.

He is an active member of the EPSRC funded CLIFFs project (Climate impact forecasting for slopes). He was also a developer of the TRL Microcomputer Accident Analysis Package MAAPfive. Derek has also worked in Egypt, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Australia, where as an invited research fellow he worked with CSIRO on the impact of large irrigation systems (especially wine production) on the water resources of the Murray Darling Basin. During several visits to Kazakhstan he worked with an EU funded team working with UNESCO on the history of irrigation in central Asia over the last 1400 years

Research

Contact

Research interests

Current projects include

iSMART: an EPSRC funded project on the soil water balance in shrink swell clays used in railway embankments. In an earlier EPSRC ROPA project he showed how the linkage between climate, vegetation and soil moisture impacts on the geotechnical properties of clay embankments and cuttings.

ESPA Deltas: a NERC/DFID funded project examining the potential impacts of climatic changes on low land areas in coastal Bangladesh.

Ecohydrology of coastal dune systems. This is a long term study of the effects of climate land management on groundwater levels in ecologically sensitive areas. In collaboration with the Sefton Coastal Partnership, Natural England CeH Wallingford and Bangor.
Analysis of phosphorous in chalk rivers in Southern England.

Previous projects include
CROPWAT for Windows: Derek led the team that developed “CROPWAT for Windows”, the worldwide standard software for irrigation crop water requirements. This work was done in collaboration with Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and the National Water Research centre in Cairo. The CROPWAT package is freely available from the FAO web site and is in use in over 90 countries around the world. This software sets a standard approach to the assessment to the amount of irrigation water that crops need and how to plan and manage the delivery of water to ensure that crops do not suffer stress due to drought.

CROPSAL. He led the EU Research Programme “CROPSAL” based in central Asia which showed that only 20% of the irrigation water diverted from the rivers flowing into the Aral Sea was delivered to cotton growing farms at the right time. The modelling of soil moisture deficit and measurement of in field water use in Kazakhstan has shown how improved water management can help slow down the shrinkage of the Aral Sea.

IMCORE: Integrated coastal modelling under the EU INTEREG IV programme.

For information on the Group's research please follow the links below:
Water engineering

Affiliate research groups

Coastal Engineering and Management , Energy and Climate Change , Infrastructure Group

Research project(s)

Phosphorus in the perennial headwaters of chalk streams

ESPA Deltas

Water Availability and the Production of Biofuels - An Integrated Assessment

The project involved joint workshops between the Universities of Southampton and Bath in the UK and the University of California at Irvine, to address these issues and to look at potential research approaches and areas for collaboration.

Opportunities and trade-offs between the SDGs for food, welfare and the environment in deltas

Development of Integrated Assessment Models to addresses mapping the complexity of SDGs within a large-scale social-ecological system , as well as directly supporting the evaluation and development of policies and practises to deliver sustainable development in West Bengal, India.

Dr Derek Clarke
Engineering, University of Southampton, Southampton Boldrewood Innovation Campus, Burgess Road, Southampton, SO16 7QF

Room Number : 178/5017

Facsimile: (023) 8067 7519

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