Skip to content

School of Geography and the Environment

University of Oxford
School of Geography and the Environment

 School of Geography and the Environment

Professor David S.G. Thomas

Academic Profile

David Thomas is a geomorphologist by training and pursues research interests in arid environmental systems, Quaternary climate and environmental change, and contemporary and future climate change and development. He was elected Professor of Geography and a Professorial Fellow of Hertford College in 2004. He gained his BA, Cert.Ed. and D.Phil. at Oxford (1977-84). In the intervening years he progressed from Lecturer to Professor of Geography (1994) at the University of Sheffield, where he was also director of The Sheffield Centre for International Drylands Research. He holds or has held a number of senior positions within the research community including Vice President of the Royal Geographical Society (2002-5) and Chair of the British Geomorphological Research Group (2002-3). He has sat on Royal Society and Geological Society committees and is a Director of the CHANGES (Carbon, Hydrology and Global Environmental Systems) research collaborative funded by UNESCO, ICSU, IUGS, and IGCP. He is currently leader of IGCP project 500 (Dryland change, past present future), Geography and Earth Sciences editor of the Journal of Arid Environments and is on the editorial book of a number of other journals and book series. His books include the highly acclaimed The Kalahari Environment (CUP, 1991, with Paul Shaw), and Desertification: Exploding the Myth, (Wiley, 1994, with Nick Middleton).

To date David has been principal or co-investigator on research grants totally over £6 million, funded from sources including UK research councils, (NERC, ESRC), the Royal Society, Leverhulme Trust, and other agencies and charities. He has authored over 80 articles in peer-reviewed journals. He co-authored both editions of the World Atlas of Desertification (Edward Arnold, 1992 and 1997, with Nick Middleton), and is editor of Arid Zone Geomorphology (Wiley 1997), the leading textbook on dryland geomorphology, for which a third edition is now in preparation. In 2000 he joined Andrew Goudie to edit the third edition of The Dictionary of Physical geography (Blackwell).

His research interests have generated working links with scientists in many countries, with links to South Africa, Botswana, Namibia Mozambique and the United Arab Emirates particularly active at present. His activities have been recognised by the award of an Honorary Professorship at the University of Cape Town (2006) and in 2005 the first Oman-Thesiger Research Fellowship of the Royal Geographical Society.

He has given numerous plenary and key note addresses at major international conferences, including at The International Geographical Union Congress, Durban (2002), the 16th INQUA Congress, Reno (2003), the the Southern African Quaternary Association (SASQUA) Conference Bloemfontein (2005), the 2nd Southern Deserts Conference, Arica, Chile (2005) and at the first South African National Climate Change Conference, Midrand (2005), and at the 'Desertification and the international policy imperative' conference, organised by the United Nations, in Algiers (2006).

He supervised 18 PhDs to successful completion at Sheffield, has supervised 4 completed doctorates at Oxford and is currently supervisor of 9 D.Phil. students.

He is a member of the Geography and Environmental Studies sub-panel (H-32) for the 2008 UK Research Assessment Exercise.

He is currently organising the 3rd Southern Deserts Conference - Kalahari 2008 to be held in South Africa from the 16th-19th September 2008.

Current Research

Dave Thomas's current research interests are in the areas of dryland environments, climate and environmental change, placing particular emphasis on the value of rigorous fieldwork, backed up with appropriate laboratory, analytical and modelling methods. Many field seasons have been spent working on Quaternary environmental change and aeolian process questions in and around the margins of deserts in Africa and other continents. This contributed to a growing awareness of the power of modern environmental changes, especially those linked to human actions, an interest that in recent years has expanded to include collaborative research with social scientists.

Specific research themes currently being investigated are:

1) Quaternary environmental changes in drylands and the low latitudes, including the timing, nature and causes of major environmental changes in central southern Africa during the last glacial cycle.

This long-running theme involves collaborative research with other institutions and funding from a range of sources including NERC, The Royal Society and the Leverhulme Trust. A core component of investigations is to better understand the timing and forcing mechanisms responsible for significant desert expansions and contractions in the subcontinent. Better interpretations are vital if improved data sources as inputs to GCMs are to occur and enhanced predictions of future changes are to be achieved.

Sampling for optical dating: the village of Sepopa in NW Botswana is located on the crest of a large, late Quaternary linear dune. Field sampling proved a major attraction for village children.

Sampling for optical dating: the village of Sepopa in NW Botswana is located on the crest of a large, late Quaternary linear dune. Field sampling proved a major attraction for village children.

Field investigations have concentrated on sediments and landforms in the extensive Kalahari region and in peripheral minor aeolian systems. Since 1992 a major component of this research has been the establishment of an optically dated chronology of major environmental changes in the late Quaternary, Recent investigations have focussed on the stabilised dune fields within the Kalahari sedimentary system and in the Namib, and on the shoreline systems of former lakes within dryland Africa. Research links have also led to investigations in other areas including China, wher activities have focussed on producing chronologies of loess accumulation, Iran, Kuwait, USA and Turkmenistan. Current foci include obtaining higher resolution chronologies using newer optical dating protocols, obtaining continuous records of dune and shoreline development through better field sampling techniques; investigating multi-proxy sites that contain direct records of both arid and humid phases; investigating new climate change proxies including the records preserved within fossil hyrax middens; and on the resolution of empirical records of long term change and models of the climate system dynamics responsible for these changes.

Simple but effective: hydraulic coring kit, fitted with a sand drilling head and using special light-tight sample extraction tubes, is allowing high-resolution field sampling of dune sands. A small sampling interval (e.g. <0.5m) allows near-continousl optical dating of dune depositional histories.

Simple but effective: hydraulic coring kit, fitted with a sand drilling head and using special light-tight sample extraction tubes, is allowing high-resolution field sampling of dune sands. A small sampling interval (e.g. <0.5m) allows near-continousl optical dating of dune depositional histories.

2) Climate Change Impacts.

From 2002-5 David Thomas was been Principal Investigator on a major research project funded by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. This project is investigating how natural resource-dependant societies in the developing world, particularly southern Africa, respond and adapt to climatic variability and shocks such as drought and floods, and how these responses may better inform an understanding of likely 21st century responses to global warming-induced climate change. This was a truly interdisciplinary project that brings together social and environmental scientists including climate and vegetation modellers. Key outcomes include work on learning processes in adaptation, changing use of ecosystem resources, and equity and justice issues. A major news item was published in Nature (12 April 2007) on this research. Since 2006 he has been a co-director of The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Programme 4, which focusses on climate change and development. In particular, he is responsible for projects investigating the impact of development programmes on the ability to cope with and adapt to climate change in Africa.

Work on adaptation to climate change is also addressing landscape responses in the low latitudes. This is combining models derived from dune dynamics process studies, climate modelling and ecosystem dynamics. A recent paper in Nature has shown the potential value of combining this modelling approach with an understanding of past environmental dynamics to explore possible 21st century environmental changes. A new Royal Society grant is facilitating a new collaboration between Oxford and the University of Cape Town to explore methods and approaches to model landscape responses to future climate changes in Africa. more...

Community actions in restoring degraded drylands: a village group involved in gully restoration in Limpopo Province, South Africa, a area in which PhD based research is currently being supervised.

Community actions in restoring degraded drylands: a village group involved in gully restoration in Limpopo Province, South Africa, a area in which PhD based research is currently being supervised.

3) Society-environment interactions in arid and semi-arid regions: Land degradation and change; natural resource use and adaptation to climate change.

Work includes direct field studies of dryland environmental degradation, the consideration of desertification as an environmental issue in scientific and popular circles, and the roles of local and 'expert' knowledge in the perception and tackling of land degradation issues. A co-authored book on desertification received major international press coverage in 1994-5. Direct empirical research has focussed on the environmental and social impacts of land use changes in southern African drylands, particularly the Kalahari. Human use of the arid to semi-arid Kalahari environment is increasing and intensifying, particularly through the commercial ranching and the sinking of new water supply boreholes. The impacts of these land use changes on indigenous Kalahari populations and their abilities to respond to environmental and climatic stress were explored via an ESRC-Global Environmental Change Programme project (1994-7). Policy dimensions, and cross-border contrasts, of people- environment relationships and well-being in southern Africa have been investigated via a major collaborative project, PANRUSA (Poverty, Policy and natural resource use in southern Africa) that was funded by the UK Department for International Development from 1998-2001 and led by David Thomas. Recent work has also been focusing on the interface between 'scientific' and 'local' interpretations and responses to environmental (erosion, vegetation) changes in drylands, through NERC-ESRC PhD studentships. As well as investigating the nature of scientific constructions of degradation, this work has relevance to understanding how land users will cope with and adapt to landscape changes that will result from 21st century changes in climate brought about by global warming.

Selected Research Projects (since 2001)

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching

I teach on Undergraduate, Masters and doctorate programmes in the School. At undergraduate level, I lecture on the The Geographical Environment: Physical core course, and contribute half of the teaching in the Quaternary Period and Dryland Environments Special Subjects for the Final Honour School.

Postgraduate Teaching

I teach on the Research training courses for first year doctoral students. I also take overseas field classes, for undergraduate dryland courses.

Current graduate students include:
  • Carolyn Armstrong
    Natural disasters and poverty.
  • Ian Ashpole
    Towards a more accurate simulation of the effects of small-scale variability on large-scale dust emissions
  • Oliver Atkinson
    A multi-proxy analysis of climate-induced environmental change in south-east Arabia.
  • Caroline King
    Oasis ecosystems and global change.
  • Laura Pereira
    Private sector adaptive capacity to climate change impacts in the food system: food security implications for southern Africa and Latin America
D.Phil. students successfully completing since 2001:
  • Alexandra Conliffe (2009)
    The Combined Impacts of Political and Environmental Change on Rural Livelihoods in the Aral Sea Region of Uzbekistan.
  • Daniel McGahey (2009)
    Impact of veterinary fences on environment and society in northern Botswana.
  • Troy Sternberg (2009)
    Effect of water and land use change on the Mongolian environment.
  • Abigail Stone (2009)
    Multi-proxy reconstruction of late Quaternary climate dynamics in western Southern Africa.
  • Sallie Burrough (2008)
    Late Quarternary paleolacustrine environments in the Middle Kalahari, Botswana.
  • Florence Crick (2008)
    Exposure to drought: Adaptive strategies among rural societies in Africa.
  • Susannah Sallu (2007)
    Biodiversity dynamics, knowledges and livelihoods in Kalahari dryland biomes.
  • Thomas Stevens (2006)
    Late Quaternary climate recorded in Chinese loess: OSL analysis of record continuity and preservation.
  • Brian Chase (2005)
    Late Quaternary palaeoenvironments of the west coast of South Africa: The aeolian record.

Selected Publications

Books
Papers and Articles