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Professor Kate Heppell

Kate

Honorary Professor of Physical Geography

Email: c.m.heppell@qmul.ac.uk

Profile

My research is focused on the transport and transformation of contaminants and pollutants as they move through lowland river catchments and undergo exchanges at the interface of land, water and atmosphere. My research poses globally significant questions such as:

  • How do hydrological and biogeochemical processes, in different landscape settings, interact to remove excess nutrients from our rivers?
  • How might flooding by nutrient-rich freshwaters affect greenhouse gas fluxes?

Important research achievements include quantification of a little-measured nitrogen transformation process (DNRA) in soils and sediments (Sgouridis et al., 2011; Lansdown et al., 2012); establishing the extent to which macrophytes control the magnitude and timing of sediment storage in a chalk river (Heppell et al., 2009); measuring and highlighting the potential importance of in-stream mineralisation of organic carbon and nitrogen (Sanders et al., 2007; Trimmer et al., 2009); and quantifying the importance of methane ebullition in northern peatlands (Stamp et al., 2013).

Key publications are:

  • Lansdown K, Heppell CM, Trimmer M, Binley A, Heathwaite AL, Byrne P, Zhang H  (2015) The interplay between transport and reaction rates as controls on nitrate attenuation in permeable, streambed sediments. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. doi: 10.1002/204JG002874.
  • Lansdown K, Heppell CM, Dossena M, Ullah S, Heathwaite AL, Binley A, Zhang H & Trimmer M 2014. Fine-scale in situ measurement of river bed nitrate production and consumption in an armored permeable river bed. Environmental Science &Technology, doi: 10.1021/es4056006.
  • Heppell CM, Heathwaite AL, Binley A, Byrne P, Ullah S, Lansdown K, Keenan P, Trimmer M & Zhang H 2013. Interpreting spatial patterns in redox and coupled water-nitrogen fluxes in the streambed of a gaining river reach. Biogeochemistry, doi: 10.1007/s10533-013-9895-4.
  • Heppell CM, Wharton, G, Cotton, JAC, Bass, JAB & Roberts, SE 2009. Sediment storage in the shallow hyporheic of lowland vegetated reaches. Hydrological Processes, 23(15), 2239–2251.
  • Sgouridis F, Heppell CM, Trimmer M, and Wharton G 2011. Denitrification and dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium (DNRA) in a temperate re-connected floodplain. Water Research, 45(16), 4909-4922.
  • Lansdown K, Trimmer M, Heppell CM, Sgouridis F, Ullah S ,  Heathwaite AL ,  Binley A and Zhang H 2012. Characterisation of the key pathways of dissimilatory nitrate reduction and their response to complex organic substrates in hyporheic sediments. Limnology and Oceanography 57(2), 387–400.
  • Sanders I, Heppell CM, Cotton JA, Wharton G, Hildrew A, Flowers EJ & Trimmer M 2007. Emission of methane from chalk streams has potential implications for agricultural practices. Freshwater Biology, 52(6), 1176–1186.
  • Trimmer M, Grey J, Heppell CM, Hildrew AG, Lansdown K, Stahl H, Yvon-Durocher G 2012. River bed carbon and nitrogen cycling: state of play and some new directions. Science of the Total Environment, 434,143–158.
  • Stamp I, Baird A & Heppell CM (in press). The importance of ebullition as a mechanism of methane (CH4) loss to the atmosphere in northern peatlands Journal of Geophysical Research.
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