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RSPSoc Student Profile: A J Hardy
Occupation: PhD student
Interests: Surfing, guitar
Bio: Born in Warrington I left for Manchester Metropolitan University to do my undergraduate degree in geography. This included a year working for the Environment Agency as a Water Resources Planner. Following the environmental route I went on to do a Masters in Environmental Monitoring, Modelling and Reconstruction at Manchester University. Both my undergraduate and masters degree gave me a taste for remote sensing which led me to pursue a PhD at Newcastle University with Prof Jon Mills in estimating soil moisture as an indicator of slope instability using multispectral airborne imagery. During my time here at Newcastle I have taken on the responsibilities of Student Representative for RSPSoc and am currently organising the Annual Student Meeting 2009.
Course: Geomatics
University: Newcastle University
Research: Estimating soil moisture as an indicator of slope stability
Details of Research: Much of the world's transport networks are located on embankments and cuttings, which are all susceptable to slope instability. Soil moisture is one of the key component governing slope stability. Using multispectral airborne CASI imagery I hope to characterise soil moisture in the Haltwhistle transport corridor, Northumberland. This will be done by classifying the vegetation then mapping relative Ellenberg moisture indicator values which score plant species according to their ideal moisture conditions. Also being considered is the effect of water induced plant stress and topographic wetness analysis derived from LiDAR.
