Professor David Thomas is a physical geographer who investigates dryland systems, from semi-arid to hyperarid, particularly environmental change and aeolian system dynamics, at Quaternary to recent timescales, including responses to climate change and variability. He also have a long track record of investigating critical elements of human-environment interactions including land degradation. He has worked in drylands worldwide including in Africa, Asia and the Americas. In Africa I have primarily worked in The Kalahari and Namib deserts, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, but also in East and northern Africa.
Prof Thomas has a 35 year track record of major externally-funded research projects (£12mil as PI or Co-I) and inter-actions with agencies at the applied/policy end of dryland dynamics. See http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/staff/dthomas.html. Though a geomorphologist by training, much of his research has been multi- or inter-disciplinary.
Current and recent projects in Africa include:
- Reinventing the agriculture-energy nexus in Africa (focussing on sustainable anarobic digestion from succulents, working with partners in engineering, plant sciences and in Namibia); see https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/bioenergy/
- Landscape archaeology of the Kalahari (with the universities of Botswana, Brighton and Oslo);
- Hotspots of dust emission in Namibia; and
- Floods and droughts: Quaternary environmental dynamics of the Upper Zambezi.
Prof Thomas is an author of over 200 publications: 170 peer-reviewed papers, 30 other papers and 11 books, including World Atlas of Desertification (1997, Edward Arnold); Sustainable livelihoods in Kalahari Environments: contributions to global debates (2002, OUP); Arid Zone Geomorphology: process, form and change in drylands. (3rd edn, 2011 Wiley), and The Dictionary of Physical geography(4th edn, 2016, Blackwell-Wiley).
Prof Thomas has supervised almost 50 PhD (doctoral) studnets, including young African scientists from South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Namibia. In 2011, he received the Geological Society of America El-Baz Award, for a body of work that has significantly enhanced desert science, and in 2019 the Royal Geographical Society Victoria Medal, for world leading research into dryland environments and societies. He has been head of department at both University of Sheffield and University of Oxford, Honorary Professor at University of Cape Town and University of the Witwatersrand, Vice-President of the Royal Geograpohical Society, a panel chair in United Kingdom REF2021, led the QAA review of United Kingdom University Geography, and chaired the international review of United Kingdom Physical Geography.
