Staff profile

• 2019 - present: Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Durham University
• 2018 - 2019: GeoX Fellow, Institute of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Potsdam. Fusion of high-resolution point cloud and spectral data for deriving topographic metrics.
• 2017: Predoctoral Research Associate, St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, University of Minnesota. Climate change and fluvial systems: investigating the impact of channel geometry on landscape evolution.
• 2016-2017: NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellow, University of Edinburgh. Modelling the impact of future climate change on flood risk in Scotland.
• 2013-2017: PhD, University of Edinburgh. Controls on fluvial networks in upland landscapes: from hillslopes to floodplains.
• 2009-2013: BSc Geology and Physical Geography, University of Edinburgh. First Class Honours.

Research Interests

I am a geomorphologist studying the interactions between the shape of Earth’s topography, surface processes, tectonics, and climate. 

Open source software for topographic analysis

A large part of my research is developing open-source software for analysing topographic data. I particularly focus on dealing with high-resolution data derived from lidar point clouds. I’ve been developing this software, called LSDTopoTools, along with colleagues at the University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, and Queen Mary University of London. See our LSDTopoTools website for more details, or check out our GitHub organisation. We have developed lots of novel techniques for analysing topography, such as extracting channel networks, delineating floodplains and river terraces, and calculating hilltop and hillslope metrics.

Landscapes and tectonics along the San Andreas Fault

I’m interested in understanding how the shape of the topography is related to the tectonic motion along the San Andreas Fault. I’m currently working at the Mendocino Triple Junction, California, where there is a large variation in uplift rates along the strike of the fault.

I’m analysing a series of river basins along the Californian coast where uplift varies from a maximum of 4 mm/year at Cape Mendocino, to 0.5 mm/year near Fort Bragg. I’m looking to see whether we can detect a signature of this change in the steepness of the rivers, hillslopes, and hilltops.

Alongside this work, I am also interested in understanding how the morphology of river profiles along the entire San Andreas fault is related to both long-term uplift rates from thermochronometry, and short-term uplift rates from GPS data. 

• Catchments and Rivers
• Hazards and Surface Change

Chapter in book

• Mudd, Simon M., Roda-Boluda, Duna C., Goren, Liran & Clubb, Fiona J. (2021). Beyond the Long Profile. In Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences. Elsevier.
• Grieve, Stuart W.D., Clubb, Fiona J. & Mudd, Simon M. (2020). Reproducible topographic analysis. In Remote Sensing of Geomorphology. Tarolli, Paolo & Mudd, Simon M. Amsterdam: Elsevier. 20: 339-367.

Journal Article

• Gailleton, Boris, Mudd, Simon M., Clubb, Fiona J., Grieve, Stuart W.D. & Hurst, Martin D. (2021). Impact of changing concavity indices on channel steepness and divide migration metrics. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface 126(10): e2020JF006060.
• Clubb, F.J., Mudd, S.M., Hurst, M.D. & Grieve, S.W.D. (2020). Differences in channel and hillslope geometry record a migrating uplift wave at the Mendocino Triple Junction. Geology 48(2): 184-188.
• Hurst, Martin D., Grieve, Stuart W.D., Clubb, Fiona J. & Mudd, Simon M. (2019). Detection of channel-hillslope coupling along a tectonic gradient. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 522: 30-39.
• Clubb, Fiona J., Bookhagen, Bodo & Rheinwalt, Aljoscha (2019). Clustering River Profiles to Classify Geomorphic Domains. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface 124(6): 1417-1439.
• Gailleton, Boris, Mudd, Simon M., Clubb, Fiona J., Peifer, Daniel & Hurst, Martin D. (2019). A segmentation approach for the reproducible extraction and quantification of knickpoints from river long profiles. Earth Surface Dynamics 7(1): 211.
• Mudd, Simon M., Clubb, Fiona J., Gailleton, Boris & Hurst, Martin D. (2018). How concave are river channels? Earth Surface Dynamics 6(2): 505-523.
• Goodwin, Guillaume C. H., Mudd, Simon M. & Clubb, Fiona J. (2018). Unsupervised detection of salt marsh platforms: a topographic method. Earth Surface Dynamics 6(1): 239.
• Grieve, Stuart W. D., Hales, Tristram C., Parker, Robert N., Mudd, Simon M. & Clubb, Fiona J. (2018). Controls on Zero‐Order Basin Morphology. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface
• Clubb, Fiona J., Mudd, Simon M., Milodowski, David T., Valters, Declan A., Slater, Louise J., Hurst, Martin D. & Limaye, Ajay B. (2017). Geomorphometric delineation of floodplains and terraces from objectively defined topographic thresholds. Earth Surface Dynamics 5: 369-385.
• Clubb, Fiona J., Mudd, Simon M., Attal, Mikaël, Milodowski, David T. & Grieve, Stuart W.D. (2016). The relationship between drainage density, erosion rate, and hilltop curvature: Implications for sediment transport processes. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface 121(10): 1724-1745.
• Grieve, Stuart W. D., Mudd, Simon M., Milodowski, David T., Clubb, Fiona J. & Furbish, David J. (2016). How does grid-resolution modulate the topographic expression of geomorphic processes? Earth Surface Dynamics 4(3): 627.
• Clubb, Fiona J., Mudd, Simon M., Milodowski, David T., Hurst, Martin D. & Slater, Louise J. (2014). Objective extraction of channel heads from high-resolution topographic data. Water Resources Research 50(5): 4283-4304.