Nick Kettridge is a Professor of Ecohydrology at the University of Birmingham (UK) and Adjunct Professor at the University of Alberta (Canada). His research characterizes the resilience of landscape ecosystem services to both natural and anthropogenic disturbance, notably wildfire. This resilience is controlled by a complex array of interconnected feedback mechanisms that transcend the traditional disciplines of hydrology, ecology, biogeochemistry and micro-meteorology and propagate across both spatial and temporal scales. His research breaks down these boundaries and investigates the essential system interactions that control the response of these services to changing environmental pressures, working at spatial scales ranging from individual biogenic gas bubbles to the continental scale, at timescales ranging from hours to millennia.

A key component of this research is focus on quantifying the primary controls on ecosystems near surface moisture content and its spatiotemporal variability. Notably on the capacity of ecosystem to regulate evapotranspiration over varying timescales. This research brings together field scale monitoring, field and laboratory manipulations and computer simulations to unravel these complex ecohydrological interactions, providing a process-based understanding of ecosystem functioning. Only through this improved process understanding can we predict the future ecohydrological and biogeochemical responses of environments to changing climatic conditions and disturbances such as wildfire, characterize the resilience of current ecosystem services and develop informed, relevant management and restoration strategies.