Dr Suryodoy Ghoshal

I'm currently working at the University of Plymouth with Dr Sarah Boulton on the EXCESS project to investigate how earthquakes precondition the landscape for landslides. I will be focusing on using coupled numerical modelling techniques to study the creation of excess topography and its relationship to landsliding in various locations around the world.

March, 2024 - present: Postdoctoral research associate -- EXCESS, University of Plymouth, UK

September, 2021 - October, 2022: Teach@Tuebingen Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Tuebingen, Germany, working on coupled thermokinematic-landscape evolution modelling of the central Nepal Himalaya to study the effect of relief on the subsurface thermal field and thermochronological cooling ages

September, 2015 - August, 2021: PhD at the University of Pittsburgh, USA with thesis titled: 'Assessing the kinematics and subsurface geometry of the central Nepal Himalayas: Insights from thermokinematic modeling', advised by Prof. Nadine McQuarrie

I am originally a structural geologist, interested in how orogens deform and the relationships between the processes by which the deformation occurs. I'm also strongly interested in how the structure and kinematics of orogens interact with climate to produce the landscapes at the surface, particularly focused on natural hazards.

During my PhD, I combined new and published thermochronological and thermal datasets with detailed field mapping to create a series of thermokinematically-validated balanced cross-sections, highlighting how the subsurface geometry of the central Nepal Himalaya changes from east to west. The objective of the project was to identify significant variations in the subsurface structure of the region, and assess whether they may have exerted some measure of control on the nucleation and propagation of the 2015 Gorkha earthquake. This was followed up with a year-long postdoctoral project investigating how the evolving topography of the central Nepal Himalaya affects the evolution of the regional thermal field, using a coupled landscape evolution-thermokinematic model.

In the EXCESS project, my role builds on my experience in the coupled numerical modelling of earth systems to investigate how earthquakes precondition landscapes in various environments around the world to fail as landslides. This research will combine large high-resolution inventories of landslides with state-of-the-art modelling techniques to better inform hazard susceptibility models, and provide significant insight into how much influence earthquakes have on the rate and distribution of landsliding.