SLU news

Visiting professor Chris Evans awarded MBE

Published: 19 October 2020
Photo of Visiting Professor Chris Evans

Chris Evans, professor at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and visiting professor at SLU since several years, has received an MBE (“Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire”) for services to ecosystem science. Much of his work has focused on greenhouse gases generated by the degradation of peatlands, but he also examines the role of freshwater in the global carbon cycle.

Professor Chris Evans is a biogeochemist who has worked at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) for more than 20 years, and has his base in Bangor, Wales. His formal collaboration with SLU began when he became the twentieth holder of the King Carl XVI Gustaf Professorship in Environmental Science 2015/16, at the Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment at SLU in Uppsala. The aim was to develop a quantitative understanding of the role of freshwaters in the global carbon cycle by utilizing data from Sweden’s environmental monitoring, which has uniquely long series of measurements regarding water chemistry in a large number of watercourses.

His collaboration with researchers in Sweden has since continued, not least with Mike Peacock, Martyn Futter and Stephan Köhler at SLU. Since January this year, he leads a three-year research project (DAEMONS), funded by Formas, which will investigate flows of nitrogen, phosphorus and dissolved organic carbon and how the relationship between these substances changes as they are transported from soils and vegetation, via streams and lakes, into the sea. The project also involves collaboration with Uppsala University, and IVL and DHI in Göteborg.

“This project brings together many of the strands of work I have been doing in Sweden, so that is the main focus at the moment, but I also work with Swedish colleagues on the water quality impacts of wildfire, aquatic greenhouse gas emissions and peatlands”, says Chris. “Unfortunately the situation is not ideal at the moment, of course – I am looking forward to the time when I am able to travel to SLU and talk to everyone in person again”.

Links

The DAEMONS project

More about the MBE award

Chris Evans CV


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