Professor Lindsay Stringer receives Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit award

The School of Earth and Environment is pleased to congratulate Professor Lindsay Stringer, for receiving the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit award for their research on improving land quality.

The Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award is a scheme recognising outstanding scientists that demonstrate a value to the UK. The five year salary enhancement is awarded to scientists whose work in the UK is producing a valuable and significant impact.

Professor Stringer’s research takes an interdisciplinary approach looking at ways to manage the land more sustainably in African countries, and how improved land quality can enhance the livelihoods of those people who directly depend on natural resources for their survival. Issues that Professor Stringer’s research helps to address include problems such as increasing demand for food from a growing population, degrading soils, biodiversity loss and climate change, meaning that Professor Stringer’s work to sustain land quality is vital for the continual development of these areas.

Land quality often gets overlooked in policies, as it cross-cuts the focus of different ministries such as agriculture, forestry, environment, water, mining.  Because of this, more research is needed to better understand how to best tackle these problems.

Professor Stringer said: “I look at what land degradation is, and how we can monitor the situation at a range of different scales, using a wide variety of qualitative and quantitative indicators, with a view to developing solutions to prevent, reduce and reverse degradation. To do this I work with large teams of people from disciplines such as ecology, biology, soil science, geography, climate science and agriculture, as well as with more social science facing disciplines like politics, sociology and economics.”

This award is a great achievement for Professor Stringer and for the School of Earth and Environment as it means vital research on land issues can be continued into the future.

Further information:

Previous SEE Wolfson Research Merit Award holders include Professors Tim Wright (satellite geodesy); Liane Benning (metagenomics of life in glacial ice); Ken Carslaw (atmospheric aerosols, weather and climate); Piers Forster (climate mitigation by short-lived species); Doug Parker (Interaction of moist convection with weather and climate systems); Andy Shepherd (how polar ice sheets contribute to global sea level rise), and Paul Wignall (Mid Phanerozoic mass extinction crises: from the Guadalupian to the Toarcian).

Related News:

Conservation Agriculture
https://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/research/research-news/news-story/conservation-agriculture/

Meet the Researcher
http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/research/sri/meet-the-researcher/meet-the-researcher-lindsay-stringer/