Dr Monica Rivas Casado
Academic Fellow
Location: Building 42, Cranfield campus
E: m.rivas-casado@cranfield.ac.uk
T: +44 (0)1234 750111 x2706
Environmental Science and Technology
Current activities
Dr Monica Rivas Casado is an Academic Fellow with expertise in the design of effective and efficient sampling strategies for environmental variables. Monica has special interest in the implementation of state of the art technologies to improve the accuracy of sampling rivers.
She is also particularly interested in uncertainty analysis for the quantification of sampling and modelling error. She is currently looking at developing statistically robust methods for river (e.g. hydromorphology) assessment and expanding her research into spatio-temporal modelling of environmental processes. Current activities include:
- Development of a statistically robust framework for river hydromorphological assessment for the Water Framework Directive
- Hydromorphological characterisation of rivers using Acoustic Doppler Current Meter (ADCP) technology
- Development of robust statistical tools for the analysis of ADCP data
- Design of effective and efficient sampling strategies for river hydromorphology
- Development and implementation of automated models for the valuation of ecosystem services
- Design of effective sampling strategies for mycotoxins in bulk commodities
- Design of a soil monitoring scheme for the UK.
Clients
- Research Councils: NERC, EPSRC, BBSRC and ESRC
- The Environment Agency (EA)
- The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH)
- Food Standard Agency
- Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)
- Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC)
- Natural England
- Scotland and Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research (SNIFFER)
- European Union.
Background
Dr Monica Rivas Casado is an Academic Fellow with expertise in the application of statistics to environmental data. She has focused her research on the modelling of spatio-temporal processes and on the analysis of the spatial structure of environmental variables for the design of monitoring strategies. She has an MSc and PhD in Environmental Water Management from Cranfield. In her PhD she quantified the uncertainty associated with the sampling protocol used to characterise river hydromorphology. This involved working with key academics and research partners such as BOKU University (Austria), CEMAGREF (France), University of Stuttgart (Germany), the River Restoration Centre (UK) and CEH (UK). The results were used to put forward guidelines for sampling protocols.
After her PhD, she worked for the River Restoration Centre where she co-organised a workshop on monitoring and post-project appraisal of river restoration. Dr Rivas Casado started her academic career at Cranfield as a Post Doctoral Research Officer in 2007 where she continued to develop her expertise in geostatistical modelling. She was promoted to an Academic Fellow in 2009 and has developed her research area in the application of spatial and temporal statistical techniques to river morphology.
She has undertaken projects, amongst others, with the Environment Agency (e.g. on evaluating river restoration effectiveness - Science Report SC070024), Natural England (e.g. on developing monitoring techniques for biodiversity across their Integrated Biodiversity Delivery Areas - Natural England Science Report 23283), DEFRA (e.g. on the statistical analysis of NSI soil carbon changes in relation to climate and land management changes - DEFRA Contract GA01088), NERC (e.g. on assessing the effect of increasing the use of alternative energy on ecosystem goods and services - Project Report NE/H010432/1) and EPSRC (e.g. CASE Studentship on designing monitoring frameworks to assess morphological anthropogenic impact in rivers – voucher 08002930).
She has also collaborated in several European programmes during her career including REBBECA, Cost Action 626 and HarmoniCa. Monica has been awarded several prizes and grants during her career for the quality and novelty of her research.
