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Tom Holmes

Tom Holmes is a PhD student at the University of York studying the effects of storminess on coastal ecosystem services and wellbeing. Coastal ecosystems, such as saltmarshes and sand dunes, provide us with a range of benefits including tourism, coastal protection and regulating the climate by storing carbon. However, our coasts are under pressure from development, rising sea level and potentially an increased number and severity of storms.

“My research investigates both how resilient our coasts, and the people that live at or use them, are to storms. I am investigating changes in storminess over the last 150 years by collecting saltmarsh sediment cores from the Humber Estuary, Morecambe Bay and the Essex marshes. Studying these cores, including looking at the size of the pollen grains, will help me to assess environmental changes and to what extent storms affect how salt marshes function. I am also investigating how aware coastal residents and coastal users are of environmental change and what impacts storms have on community wellbeing.”