Professor Mark D Bateman

Research Interests

Quaternary palaeoenvironments, warm and cold-climate aeolian sands, luminescence dating.

Current research

My high profile collaborative research focuses on past aeolian landscapes as an archive for better understanding past depositional processes and environmental changes. Three themes are centred around this:

• As aeolian deposits, both arid zone and cold-climate, are widespread in the Quaternary sedimentary record they can provide key data for understanding previous palaeoenvironmental conditions and inform the archaeological record. For example in Southern Africa are a range of relict geomorphic features indicative of past aeolian activity. Establishing the timing and regional significance of phases of activity has the potential to inform debates about the timing and extent of major Late Quaternary rainfall zone shifts, coastline reconfigurations and environments associated with the emergence of modern humans.

  Read more on Late Quaternary aeolian activity

• Novel applications of luminescence dating has allowed a better understanding of the integrity of preserved sandy sediments. A fundamental assumption of palaeoenvironmental work is that the archive being utilised has not undergone post depositional alteration. Research has investigates post-depositional disturbance of sedimentary sequences to establish a scientific protocol for differentiating between in-situ weathering and mixing sediments from intact sediments which contain a palaeoclimate signal. Where sediments are sufficiently unaffected by bioturbation their age, depositional context and relationship to archaeological finds can be used to establish past changes in landscape sediment dynamics.

  Read more on post-depositional disturbance

• Research is also currently trying to extend the application of luminescence dating to glacial and ice marginal sediments. Previous research has investigated cold-climate aeolian sediments and periglacial features to understand past glacial environments in Canada and NW Europe. This has now been extended to looking at ice-marginal lakes and associated sediments to understand ice-dynamics and their relationship to climate. For example work has shown that erosion of dune systems in the McKenzie Delta (Arctic Canada) are tied to Lake Aggassiz outburst floods which may have caused the Younger Dryas event. In conjunction with this, experimental work is investigating the possibility that subglacial grinding might also be a resetting mechanism for luminescence dating. The latter would enable a far wider and more direct application of luminescence dating in understanding ice-sheet advances and retreats.

  Read more on dating glacial and ice-marginal sediments

Teaching

The undergraduate and postgraduate teaching I specialise in relates to understanding past changes in climate and environment which have shaped the landscape we live in. This covers the fields of geomorphology, sedimentology and Quaternary Science with the modules I contribute to trying to make inter-disciplinary linkages between these fields as well as giving student the skills required to understand the preserved record. I have particular interests in periglacial and desert environments and each year supervise students projects in these areas.

My teaching interests reflect my research interests so I can keep students up-to-date on current developments. The style of my teachng varies from teaching out and about on fieldclasses, in the laboratory and through lectures and small group tutorials.

Mark teaches on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses including:

GEO150 Practical Methods for Physical Geography
GEO154 Geoenvironmental Fieldwork Skills
GEO206 Environmental Change
GEO233 Glacial Environments
GEO345 Glacial & Periglacial Geomorphology
GEO365 Drylands Environment Field Class

GEO6605 Unlocking the Sedimentary Archive

All staff also engage in personal supervision and tutoring of individual students at all three undergraduate levels in the following modules:
GEO163 (Information & Communication Skills for Geographers)
GEO263 or GEO264 (Research Design in Human or Physical Geography)
GEO356 (Geographical Research Project)

Key Publications

• Bateman, M.D., Bryant, R.G., Livingstone, I., Foster, I. and Parsons, A J. (2012). On the formation of sand-ramps; a case study from the Mojave Desert. Geomorphology, 161-162, 93-109.
  doi:10.1016/j.geomorph.2012.04.004
• Bateman, M.D., Buckland, P.C., Whyte, M.A., Ashurst, R.A., Boulter, C., Panagiotakopulu, E. (2011). Re-evaluation of the Last Glacial Maximum typesite at Dimlington, UK. Boreas, 40(4), 573-584.
  doi:10.1111/j.1502-3885.2011.00204.x
• Bateman, M.D., Carr, A.S., Dunajko, A., Holmes, P.J., Roberts, D.L., McClaren, S.J., Bryant, R.G., Murray-Wallace, C.V., and Marker, M.E. (2011). The evolution of coastal barrier systems: A case study of the Middle-Late Pleistocene Wilderness barriers, South Africa. Quaternary Science Reviews, 30(1-2), 63-81.
  doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2010.10.003
• Murton, J.B., Bateman, M.D., Dallimore, S.R., Teller, J.T. and Yang, Z. (2010). Mackenzie outburst flooding into the Arctic Ocean at the start of the Younger Dryas. Nature, 464, 740-743.
  doi:10.1038/nature08954
• Briant, R.M. and Bateman, M.D. (2009). Luminescence dating indicates radiocarbon age underestimation in Late Pleistocene fluvial deposits from eastern England.  Journal of Quaternary Science, 24(8), 916-927.
  doi:10.1002/jqs.1258
• Bateman, M.D., Boulter, C.H., Carr, A.S., Frederick, C.D., Peter, D. and Wilder, M. (2007). Detecting Post-depositional sediment disturbance in sandy deposits using optical luminescence. Quaternary Geochronology, 2(1-4), 57-64.
  doi:10.1016/j.quageo.2006.05.004
• Bateman, M.D. and Godby, S.P. (2004). Late-Holocene Inland Dune Activity in the UK: A case study from Breckland East Anglia. The Holocene, 14, 579-588.
  doi:10.1191/0959683604hl735rp

Other information

Mark Bateman helps manage the Sheffield Centre for International Drylands Research (SCIDR) and oversees the luminescence dating facility in Sheffield.