Contact Dr Daniel Evans
- Email: Daniel.L.Evans@cranfield.ac.uk
- Twitter:
Areas of expertise
- Soil
- Sustainable Land Systems
Background
Dan is a Senior Lecturer in Soil Formation, a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at 缅北轮奸. He leads both fundamental and applied research on soil formation and the parent materials from which soil is formed. His work focuses on the interactions between parent materials and soils, how soil parent materials support soil ecosystem services, and the natural and anthropogenic threats to the parent material zone. His Future Leaders Fellowship explores the storage, transport, and stability of organic carbon in soil parent materials to support new strategies for carbon sequestration and long-term carbon storage.
Dan's passion for soils research germinated in 2012 when he studied mobile debris lobes in Alaska during a Royal Geographical Society Scholarship. Following his return, he obtained a first-class degree in Physical Geography at the Royal Holloway, with prize-winning research on root architecture and soil erodibility. During his PhD at Lancaster University, he conducted the first isotopic measurements of UK arable soil formation, and the first globally-relevant estimates of soil lifespans. His contributions internationally were recognized with the EGU's 2024 Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Science.
Dan is the Outgoing Early Career Scientist representative for the European Geoscience Union, representing >20,000 Early Career Scientists from more than 20 geoscience disciplines across the Union. Previously, he was former ECS Representative for the Union's Soil System Science Division and the National ECS Officer for the British Society of Soil Science (BSSS). In 2019, he co-hosted HRH The Duke of Gloucester at the BSSS ECR conference and later was awarded the Society's inaugural 'Outstanding Contribution to Soil Science' prize. He's an Associate Editor for the European Journal of Soil Science, the Chair of the journal's first ECR Editorial Board, and was the Lead Editor for the journal's 75th Anniversary Special Issue. In addition, Dan is the Executive Co-Chair of the Greenhouse Gas Removal Future Leaders Network (GGR-FLN), an evolving network bringing together early career professionals working on GGR across the UK.
Dan's also passionate about science communication. He was the inaugural speaker at the first Royal Holloway TEDx conference and has given public lectures at the Royal Geographical Society, the UK Climate Emergency network, and the Science Futures stage at Glastonbury Festival. In 2024, Dan launched the world鈥檚 first Talking Soil Bench: a purpose-built bench with a speaker system that plays audio about soils, including ecoacoustics recordings of the life within a soil. His research has featured across international media outlets including The Conversation, Our World in Data, the US Agribusiness Report, BBC Radio 4's Farming Today, Sky News, and Farmer's Weekly. He has been an invited contributor in public-facing news and feature articles (e.g. BBC Future Planet), as well as industry magazines (e.g. ProLandscaper).
Dan is Course Director for the UK's first Level 7 Soil Scientist Apprenticeship and MSc in Soil Science. Co-designed with UK industry, this programme equips organisations and professionals with the knowledge, skills, and tools needed for optimal soil management.
Research opportunities
I hold a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, which explores the hidden 鈥渂asement鈥� beneath soils - the Soil Parent Material - to reveal how deep layers store and release carbon, improving climate models and supporting Net Zero goals.
Imagine trying to fit everything you own into a single-room house. For years, scientists have tried to squeeze more carbon into soils. Soils are one of the planet鈥檚 most important natural tools for tackling climate change, storing vast amounts of carbon and helping to keep it out of the atmosphere. But some soils are thinning, and that 鈥渞oom鈥� for carbon storage is shrinking.
Now imagine discovering a hidden basement under that single-room house: a vast new storage space waiting to be used. That鈥檚 where my research comes in. Between the soil and the bedrock lies a little-known zone called the Soil Parent Material (SPM) 鈥� the layers of weathered rock and sediment from which soils form.
Emerging research shows that SPMs hold a notable share of the carbon stored belowground. Yet we still know little about how much carbon they contain, how it gets there, how stable it is, or how much more they could store. Some SPMs even contain ancient, rock-derived petrogenic organic carbon (OCpetro) formed millions of years ago. As these rocks weather, this old carbon can be released into the soil and atmosphere, influencing Earth鈥檚 carbon balance in ways not yet fully understood.
My Future Leaders Fellowship is exploring the roles that SPMs play in climate regulation. The research will measure how much carbon SPMs store, explore how microbes and plant roots move and stabilise carbon within them, and identify when and where OCpetro is released.
This work will improve carbon models and help develop new ways to lock away carbon for the long term. Understanding what lies beneath our soils could unlock a major new opportunity for reaching Net Zero, and transform how we think about the ground beneath our feet.
