[09/26] Xiangxue Lu is a Master’s student in Geological Engineering at Nanjing University, China, and is currently undertaking a six-month research visit at the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience (IHRR), Durham University. Her visit provides an opportunity to develop new research ideas at the interface of geomorphological hazards, data-driven methods and environmental risk.
Her research interests focus on rainfall-triggered geomorphological hazards, including landslides, soil erosion and sediment transport. She is particularly interested in understanding how these processes interact across landscapes and catchments, and how extreme rainfall can influence the initiation and evolution of multiple connected hazards. Alongside process-based understanding, she is also interested in the use of GeoAI, machine learning and Earth observation for hazard assessment, spatial analysis and the identification of areas exposed to elevated risk.
During her visit to IHRR, Xiangxue is exploring how extreme rainfall and mass-movement events may influence downstream sediment responses, with particular interest in linking landslide and erosion processes across catchments. This includes considering how sediment generated by slope failures may be transferred through river systems, and how these connected processes might be represented and analysed using spatial and data-driven approaches.
She is also reviewing methods for landslide inventory mapping and susceptibility assessment, with the aim of understanding how observational data, remote sensing and machine-learning techniques can be combined to support more informative hazard analysis. A particular interest is in moving beyond the study of individual hazards in isolation and towards a better understanding of interacting geomorphological processes.
Through discussions with Bruce Malamud, Fausto Guzzetti, Hailiang Du and other IHRR researchers, Xiangxue is developing ideas for a data-driven research direction that brings together geomorphology, hazard science and quantitative modelling. Her visit also offers an opportunity to engage with IHRR’s wider interdisciplinary research environment and to explore potential directions for future collaboration between Durham University and Nanjing University.
The broader aim of the visit is to contribute to a better understanding of how extreme rainfall, landslides, erosion and sediment transport interact across space and time, and how emerging data-driven tools can help improve the assessment of complex and interconnected geomorphological hazards.
Credit : Xiangxue Lu
/filters:quality(70)/prod01/prodbucket01/media/durham-university/research-/research-institutes/institute-of-hazard-risk-and-resilience/43875.jpg)