Hervé Piégay (2018)
The David Linton Award is given to a geomorphologist who has made a leading contribution to the discipline over a sustained period. The 2018 Award is made to Hervé Piégay because of his academic contribution to the field of geomorphology and also the way he has promoted geomorphology across Europe and beyond as an essential tool in the diagnosis of river-related problems and their management.

Since the award of his PhD in 1995, Hervé Piégay has made many important contributions to fluvial geomorphology. His early work focussed on wood as a physical element in rivers and he soon recognised that this was an important focus for multidisciplinary river research, collaborating closely with freshwater ecologists and hydrologists.

As he has moved up through the environmental research hierarchy in France to his current position as Director of the Rhône River Observatory (OHM Rhône-Valley) and Research Director, Unit 5600 CNRS / EVS in Lyon, he has maintained a multidisciplinary approach to river research centred on fluvial geomorphology.

He has progressively increased the spatial scale and decreased the temporal scale of his research to produce new insights into the functioning of rivers at up to regional scales and into river processes at resolutions from decades to seconds.

He has achieved this by embracing increasingly sophisticated field monitoring techniques, developing cutting-edge GIS-based modelling techniques, and attracting funding for (to date) 37 post-docs, 35 research students and 86 masters students.

Hervé Piégay has become a highly influential applied environmental science within Europe, and in doing so has caused geomorphology to become a widely recognised central component in the investigation and management of catchments and river systems.

Hervé will present the Linton lecture at the 2018 AGM.
(British Society Geomorphology Press Release)