Emeritus Professor Des Walling

Des Walling Honoured

Emeritus Professor Des Walling, Department of Geography, has had a virtual special issue of the International Journal Hydrological Processes published in his honour to mark and to celebrate his outstanding contribution to the understanding of fine sediment in river catchments over the last 50 years.

Papers for this publication were invited from those who have worked with Des at Exeter over this period as postgraduates, research assistants and research fellows, and who have gone on to careers in other academic, research or government institutions and consultancies and who, in many cases, now have their own graduate students. In addition, contributions were sought from those with whom he has collaborated in other institutions outside of Exeter and often overseas. The brief to authors was to show how Des’s legacy in studies of fluvial sediment has been built upon and taken forward in recent years, and the contributions in the special issue address a number of the research themes that Des has pioneered and pursued during his long career, including:

Assessing behaviour, fluxes and properties of suspended sediment,
Sediment delivery, stores, and catchment sediment budgets,
Long-term trends and management of sediment in catchment systems.

The virtual special issue, which is entitled Understanding sediment in river systems – building on a fifty-year contribution by Des Walling was completed on 12th January 2023. It contains two commentaries, nineteen research articles and a preface, and it can be accessed at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-1085.HONOUR-DES-WALLING.

Date: 8 January 2023