Project Videos

Pengzhi studied Agriculture Science at Northeast Forestry University in Harbin with a major in Soil and Water Conservation. He conducted his MSc thesis in the black soil region of China, where I he quantified tillage erosion rates and their effects on SOC cycling. Pengzhi is a PhD student working at Université catholique de Louvain, affiliated to the Earth & Life Institute, Faculty of Sciences. His research focuses on the biogeochemical cycles of soil organic carbon (SOC) and stability mechanisms of SOC in colluvial soils. His role in TerrACE is to assess the significance of terraces as SOC store and to improve our understanding of their evolution.

Kevin Walsh's research covers the domain of Geoarchaeology situated within a broader framework that considers forms of human-environment interactions within a socio-ecological framework. His earliest geoarchaeological research comprised the study of the sand dune system around an Early Medieval site on the north shore of Lindisfarne (Holy Island) on the Northumbrian coast. He then moved to Provence, France where he evaluated the range of methodologies employed by environmental archaeologists working n Mediterranean Landscape Archaeology. Fieldwork in this region included geoarchaeological work around the Roman watermill of Barbegal as well as work across the Sainte Victoire mountain near Aix-en-Provence. With French colleagues, Walsh has pioneered the development of landscape archaeology in the high altitude zones of the French Alps. This work addresses issues of human-environment interactions during the Holocene, combing archaeological, geoarchaeological and paleoecological research. He has also worked in the Peloponnese addressing similar issues, including the exploitation of palaeoenvironmental data in an assessment of geomythology. These projects have all resulted in a number of publications, including a major single-authored book published by CUP that presents an assessment of human-environment interactions across the Mediterranean from the Neolithic to the Roman period.

Kristof Van Oost received his PhD degree in physical Geography in 2003 (KULeuven). After his PhD, Kristof Van Oost was an EU Marie-Curie fellow at the Earth Surface Processes Research group of the University of Exeter (UK) for two years and specialized in soil biogeochemical modelling. Since 2007, Kristof Van Oost is a Research associate of the FNRW (Since 2015 Senior Research Associate) and Professor at Université catholique de Louvain, affiliated to the Earth & Life Institute, Faculty of Sciences. He led and was involved in many projects funded by BELSPO, FSR, FNRS, EU-FP6&FP7 and World Bank. His interests are in geomorphology and soil science with a particular focus on agricultural erosion and the role of sediment transport in carbon and nutrient cycling across landscapes. Much of his work involves modelling with an emphasis on geographical aspects and scale issues. His recent research seeks to develop new approaches that allow for an integrated study of geomorphology, hydrology and geochemistry in soil landscapes using environmental nuclides and carbon isotopes.

ara Cucchiaro is a young researcher who has completed a PhD at university of Padua. During her PhD project, she has worked on high-resolution topographic technologies to monitor and model hydrological and geomorphological processes in mountain catchments. She has studied the effects of torrent control work on sediment dynamic through multi-temporal surveys using aerial (UAV) and terrestrial photogrammetry, GNSS, and LiDAR technologies. The terraces monitoring is a new important challenge to continue the studying of the human impacts on landscape by exploiting the high-resolution techniques to realize multi-temporal surveys.

Paolo Tarolli is Associate Professor and head of Earth Surface Processes and Society research group at University of Padova (Italy). He is Executive Editor of the journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS) and Science Officer of the Natural Hazards division at the European Geosciences Union (EGU). He is expert in digital terrain analysis; earth surface processes analysis; natural hazards; geomorphology; hydro-geomorphology; lidar; structure-from-motion photogrammetry, and GIS; new research directions include the analysis of topographic signatures and using remote sensing of human activities from local to regional scale. He is author of more than 80 publications (2 invited review articles, 6 special issue editorials) in leading international journals. He edited one book for Springer on World Terraced Landscapes. He is member of the European Geosciences Union, American Geophysical Union, and British Society for Geomorphology.

Daniel J. Fallu received his doctorate in archaeology from Boston University in 2017. His dissertation focused on the geoarchaeology of Mycenae, Greece at the end of the Bronze Age. His research combines archaeological soil micromorphology, X-ray fluorescence (XRF), and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to better understand the connections between environment, human activity, and landscape change in antiquity. Dr. Fallu has conducted geoarchaeological research on terraces at Mycenae and on Crete. Dan's role in TerrACE will be sampling for pXRF, pOSL, and aDNA analyses.

Rosa Maria Albert is an archaeologist specializing in palaeovegetation and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction through the study of biological microremains, such as phytoliths, starches, spherulites, and calcium oxalates. Her research focus is to improve our understanding on the relationship between humans and vegetation changes, as well as the patterns of land-use, and the exploitation of plants for different purposes, such as diet and fuel for fire.

Lisa Snape received her PhD from the University of Durham (UK) in 2018. The aim of her thesis was to apply optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating coupled with geoarchaeological techniques to understand the evolution of ancient landscape features located in the frontier regions of the Sasanian Empire (224-624 AD). During this time she developed a broader interest in interdisciplinary approaches applied to the past by integrating geoarchaeology, chonometric dating and landscape analysis. Lisa’s role is to develop a chronostratigraphic framework of agricultural terraces sampled as part of the TerrACE project.

​Andreas Lang is a physicist and geomorphologist by training and has pioneered luminescence dating of anthropogenic deposits. deposits. Andreas also runs the luminescence laboratory at the University of Salzburgh and is an expert of luminescence dating of fluvial and colluvial sediments. Besides establishing chronologies his TERRACE research is on quantifying material fluxes and process-rates.