“Keep being curious about science”
Dr Khushboo Gurung is a Research Fellow at the University of Leeds and a recipient of the 2025 President’s Award from the Geological Society
Dr Khushboo Gurung, Research Fellow at the University of Leeds (© Amy Shipley)
What are you working on?
I’m incorporating the evolution of rooted land plants into a climate-chemical model to see how plants may have impacted climate during the Phanerozoic. Plants have existed on Earth for roughly the past 470 million years and their evolution is theorised to have significantly modified atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, hence overall climate. Based on fossil records, we know that root evolution during the Devonian meant that plants could grow larger, expand their territory, and potentially increase weathering rates, thus increasing carbon dioxide withdrawal from the atmosphere.
Tell us more about your models
During my PhD, I created a simple vegetation model called the Fast Land Occupancy and Reaction Algorithm (FLORA), which uses environmental parameters, like temperature, to calculate maximum biomass over time. Now, I’m incorporating the results of FLORA into a climate-chemical model (the Spatial Continuous Integration model, or SCION) that simulates biogeochemical cycles through time. SCION is a step up from traditional box models, which often use constant, global values for different processes, because it allows for temporal and spatial variation. By combining the two models, I calculate weathering rates in different areas and assess where and when vegetation may have played a key role in affecting climate.
Earth’s climate is influenced by several factors (such as palaeogeography, vegetation, oceanic processes, solar luminosity, and carbon burial or release) that work at varying rates. While the processes that impact climate haven’t changed broadly over the past 500 million years, the dominant process varies. My model results suggest that vegetation played quite a big role in modifying carbon sequestration, in conjunction with paleogeography, which influences where plants can grow. By incorporating variations in vegetation in the model, I was able to recreate atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration through time and found that the results better matched proxy records compared with previous models.
What advice would you give to someone interested in joining the field?
With modelling and coding, you must be confident, dive straight in, and practise. Even if you don’t end up in academia, you have a great new skill. Having background knowledge on plants and climate and how they interact on a planetary scale is useful, but if you’re dealing with long time scales, like the Phanerozoic, it’s key to familiarise yourself with climate history in broad strokes rather than getting bogged down in specifics. My research is very interdisciplinary. Not only do you have to work with a lot of information, you must also create some cohesion between different areas of research. It will take me many years to become an expert so my advice is to keep persevering, learning, and being curious about science!
What’s your favourite thing about your research?
I really enjoy coding and using it to answer big, broad questions about our past climate. When else would I be able to think about what life used to be like millions of years ago? I love the team that I’m in, bouncing ideas off people, and meeting like-minded people from around the world. Academia has its obstacles, but I really enjoy being a researcher.
Listen to the full conversation in this episode of 5 Minutes With Khushboo Gurung
