BSG 2021 Award Winners

Professor Lynne Frostick (2021)

The winner this year is Professor Lynne Frostick (University of Hull). Professor Frostick has arguably done more than any other to push the interdisciplinary boundaries of Geomorphology – raising both the importance and profile of our discipline into the wider Geosciences, Engineering and the Social Sciences. Not only is she a former (2009) Chair of the BSG, but she was the first female Honorary Secretary and second female President of the Geological Society and was a Medallist of the Royal Geographical Society for the application of physical modelling to environmental problems, playing significant roles in projecting the importance of geomorphology and the BSG itself into these communities. Throughout her career Prof Frostick has done an enormous amount to forward the profile of women in STEM and has worked tirelessly for gender equality. She is a holder of a UKRC Woman of Outstanding Achievement Award for leadership in STEM and was Chair of the Governments expert group for women in STEM for 3 years.

Professor Frostick has published over 130 works and was the designer and founding-Director of the Total Environmental Simulator at the Deep in Hull, a large and unique flow wave and rainfall flume designed for physical modelling experiments of aquatic and marine environments including sediments, plants and animals – a facility so far ahead of its time that it remains state-of-the-art globally, 15 years since opening. In ‘retirement’ she continues to be active and, since 2015, has been a board member on the Environment Agency Executive with responsibility for Flood and Coastal Risk Management – where her tireless work in promoting the importance of geomorphology in flood risk management can be evidenced by the rise of working with natural processes agendas nationally.

For all these reasons Professor Frostick is a very worthy recipient of the Linton Award.

Dr Bethan Davies (2021)

The winner this year is Dr Bethan Davies (Royal Holloway). Dr Davies’ research advances our understanding of how ice masses behave in different climatic regimes, using wide-ranging analytical skills including geomorphological mapping, glaciology sedimentology, cosmogenic nuclide dating, remote sensing and numerical glacier modelling. Her work is internationally recognized for advances in our understanding ice-sheet behaviour and cryosphere-ocean-atmosphere interactions and she has published widely in these fields. Dr Davies is committed to public outreach. She contributes regularly to the media about glaciers and climate change. Of particularly note is her impressive popular website, www.AntarcticGlaciers.org. This website engages with school, universities and the wider public, not just in terms of the subject matter, but also through encouraging women and minorities to pursue careers in science.

Olivia Steinemann et al (2021)

The Michael J. Kirkby Award for 2021 is given to Olivia Steinemann and co-authors for the best paper published in Volume 45 (2020). The paper, “Quantifying glacial erosion on a limestone bed and the relevance for landscape development in the Alps”, is highly original in looking at glacial erosion over limestone rather than crystalline bedrock. Using a blended methodology involving geomorphological mapping, cosmogenics and numerical modelling that erosion rates in such environments are orders of magnitude lower than those typical of crystalline cases. This was attributed to the effects of strongly karstified limestone and its structural geology on erosion rates. Not only are the findings important given current interest in global glacial erosion.

Dr Alvise Finotello (2021)

The winner of this year’s Chorley Award is Dr Alvise Finotello (University of Venice, Italy) for his lead-authorship of the paper “Field migration rates of tidal meanders recapitulate fluvial morphodynamics” published in 2018 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Using a combination of field observations and analysis of aerial photography from saltmarshes in Italy, Dr Finotello’s paper challenges the view that tidal channels are stable landscape features and that they are different to the more familiar meandering channels of fluvial systems, erasing the long-prevailing perception that sinuous tidal creeks don’t meander. At the time of the nomination, the article has been accessed >4300 times.

Jennelle Anderson (2021)

Jennelle Anderson won the 2021 award for her dissertation on “Assessing the eco-hydromorphological effects and persistence of natural large wood in rivers’ completed while at Queen Mary University of London.  The full abstract can be found here.

Jessica Kitch (2019)

Jessica Kitch has won the 2019 Marjorie Sweeting award for her dissertation involving sediment fingerprinting to assess soil properties.

The 2021 Winners of the Bernie Smith award are:

• Marina Correas-Gonzalez
• Olivia Verplancke
• Sarah Walton