Professor Julian Leyland

Professor Julian Leyland

Professor

Research interests

  • Fluvial and Intertidal Geomorphology
  • Remote Environmental Sensing
  • UAVs, USVs and Autonomy in Geoscience

More research

Accepting applications from PhD students.

About

Julian is Professor of Physical Geography and director of the Environmental Sensing @Southamton enterprise facility (ES@S; www.esas.soton.ac.uk). He is also the Director of Resources and Infrastructure for Geography and Environmental Science. Julian's research interests centre on understanding how geomorphic systems respond to environmental change, using process-form monitoring, modelling and remote sensing approaches. He is an expert in the collection, analysis and interpretation of high resolution morphological and process data, including through the use of Uncrewed Aerial and Surface Vehicles, terrestrial and mobile laser scanning, multi-beam echo sounding and the use of flow monitoring equipment (managed through the ES@S facility). He also has extensive expertise in physical modelling, including experiments seeking to quantify vegetation-flow interactions. He has have developed novel analyses for estimating roughness components of geomorphic surfaces (e.g. intertidal areas, river banks/beds, vegetated floodplains) to inform flow routing and mechanisms of erosion. Julian works at scales ranging from microscopic (using CT scanning), through to global analysis of river sediment dynamics using satellite remote sensing.