Staff Profile

Dr Sam Booth is a geographer and soil scientist whose research explores the interactions between ecology, environment, and society across urban and agricultural systems. His work focuses on biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and human–nature relationships within managed landscapes such as cities. He is currently a Research Associate in Sensory Pollution at Newcastle University, working on a Leverhulme Trust funded project investigating the effects of multiple sensory pollutants on urban pollinators.

Before joining Newcastle, Sam was a Teaching Associate in Physical Geography at the University of Nottingham, where he convened undergraduate and postgraduate modules in biogeography and environmental leadership. His teaching and research combined urban agriculture, biodiversity monitoring, and citizen science, including leading the Citizen-Monitoring of Urban Agriculture Biodiversity (CUAB) programme with Nottingham City Council. He also collaborated on a NERC funded project examining agricultural management impacts on soil and vector ecology in Madagascar.

Earlier in his career, Sam worked as a Research Fellow in GIS and Remote Sensing at Nottingham Trent University, contributing to a global ecological assessment of blanket bogs and their carbon storage potential. He completed his PhD in Soil Science at the University of Nottingham, funded by Syngenta, where he developed novel X-ray CT techniques to visualise insect behaviour and soil structural change in three dimensions.

Samuel’s broader research interests include urban and agricultural ecology, ecosystem services, and the use of digital tools such as Projection Augmented Relief Models (PARMs) to visualise environmental data. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a member of the British Ecological Society.