Research interests
Keywords
Climate change, sea-level rise, coastal geomorphology, cliffs, erosion, flooding, impacts, adaptation, shoreline management, small islands, deltas, ports, insurance.
Sally’s research focuses on the following:
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Impacts of sea-level rise at a global scale
Understanding global problems helps the connect people and places, and helps solve common problems. Sally’s research has focused on what the impacts of sea-level rise could be (such as land or wetland loss, people affected), where they could occur and when, and what can be done to reduce impacts. She has also analysed the benefits of climate change mitigation at global scale. She has been funded by the Natural Environment Research Centre (NERC) and the European Commission. Sally has also undertaken research for the World Bank (e.g. Economic Impacts of Climate Change), Foreign and Commonwealth Office (in the form of maps to generate information and impact to overseas governments).
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Impacts of sea-level rise at regional and local scales
Having understood the global picture, Dr Brown’s research then focused on which global regions (continental) are most at risk. This has included a study around African coasts published as a paper, and a number of unpublished case studies. She has also been funded by the European Commission to determine the impacts of sea-level rise and the costs of adaptation around European coasts. Sally has also participated in a paper on coastal hazards in China, from her visiting PhD student. Sally contributed to a report led by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on a risk assessment of climate change in cities. This analysed potential impacts of sea-level rise, subsidence, adaptation and considered how long coastal cities could survive for with rising sea-levels.
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Small islands: Sea-level rise, impacts and sustainable development
Small islands only contain a small percentage of the world’s population, with small island developing States contributing about 1% of the world’s population. Islanders are highly reliant on the sea for their livelihoods, and so understanding environmental change is very important. Dr Brown has been working with the Ministry of Environment and Energy in the Maldives to analyse the effects of extreme water level events, impacts of sea-level rise and potential adaptation options. She is presently writing up her results for publication and is keen to extend this work further.
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Delta environments: Sea-level rise, subsidence and their impacts
Low-lying deltas are also environments highly sensitive to natural and anthropogenic change. Sally first learnt about deltas through studying land subsidence, producing a highly cited open access research article on subsidence in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta. She went on to co-author a publication on wetland loss and is now studying the impacts of an equivalent 1.5°C rise in sea-level on the Ganges-Brahmaputra, Mahanadi and Volta deltas.
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Adaptation to sea-level rise, flooding, erosion and multiple drivers of change
Adaptation to sea-level rise is essential as climate change mitigation alone will not inhibit impacts. Sally has researched how adaptation can reduce impacts on a global scale, and has considered adaptation pathways (a series of actions to reduce long-term risks by taking into account multiple uncertainties) in different environments susceptible to sea-level rise. Dr Brown has also analysed and supervised student projects on adaptation to sea-level rise in the Maldives. She also has wider interests in the Sustainable Development Goals and how these link to climate change and coastal engineering.
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Heritage and coastal change
Heritage is an important part of our coastline, in terms of natural heritage, history and cultural heritage. As coasts change, coastal heritage may need to be managed differently, either in terms of actions or awareness raising. Sea-level rise does not mean the all heritage will simply be lost to the sea. Sally has supervised numerous students researching heritage coasts, including PhD student Salma Sabour. From 2017-18, Sally took part in a NERC Innovation Placement at the National Trust, where she is promoted NERC funded science within the organisation.
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Policy implications and management of coastal science and engineering
Sally has a keen interest in understanding how coastal science and engineering makes an impact with coastal communities and governments at local, national and international levels. This stemmed from her PhD where she studied coastal engineering and management. Her present interest is in the social and economic implications of coastal management policies. She presently supervises two PhD students, jointly with Southampton Law School who have a policy angle to their PhDs (see Q&A tab). Reinforcing this interest, in 2016, Dr Brown took part in the Royal Society Scientist / Parliamentary Pairing Scheme, where she was paired with Mr Rory Stewart MP and Sir Desmond Swayne MP. She found this an amazing opportunity and privilege to witness how Parliament works.
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Erosion, geomorphology and coastal structures
Closer to home, Sally is interested in UK coastal issues. Her particular interest is in cliff erosion and crenulate bay formation, which was the topic of her PhD thesis, where she focused on Christchurch Bay, Holderness and Norfolk. Although her main research is no longer focused on this theme, she still enjoys supervising BSc Environmental Science and MSc Engineering in the Coastal Environment dissertations on the topic. In 2017-18, Sally took part in a NERC Innovation Placement, where she analysed erosion, flooding and geomorphological change on the coast.
Where can I find out more?
You can find Sally Brown's research records and more information here:
Research group
Energy and Climate Change
Affiliate research group
Coastal Engineering and Management
Research project(s)
Dr Sally BrownEngineering, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton. SO17 1BJ United Kingdom
Room Number: 25/3063
