1/2 A workshop by QUANTUM led by @pennyjohnes.bsky.social is at @bristoluni.bsky.social on 15 Jan to present findings from their research & capture ideas from their stakeholders. They're working with scientists, farmers & regulators investigating how livestock farming affects water quality.

Great to see this latest @ukri.org DOMAINE Large Grant programme publication, from Ellie Mackay @ukceh.bsky.social which provides a key advance in our ability to predict of growth stimulation of river phytoplankton by organic nutrient enrichment at UK scale: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 🧪

Seeking an experienced postdoc in freshwater environmental genetics to join our exciting @ercrefresh.bsky.social @erc.europa.eu @ukri.org team to investigate environment x gene interactions in freshwater biotic responses to environmental stressors www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPK766/s... @mgenner.bsky.social

Come and join our team!

Excited to start my PhD at @bristoluni.bsky.social as part of the @ercrefresh.bsky.social project under Penny Johnes, Dan Read (UKCEH) and Martin Genner! I'll be exploring how key microorganisms utilise and transform dissolved organic matter. Looking forward to starting with the team next week!

And that's the final @erc.europa.eu @ercrefresh.bsky.social stream isotope experiment of our 2025 field season complete. With many thanks to @bristoluni.bsky.social PhD students Matt McCormack and Boyi Li for their help with eDNA sampling and completing site decommissioning before the rain arrived 🧪

All fieldwork is now complete on our ukri.org @quantumfreshwaters.bsky.social project including sampling in 60 UK livestock farming headwater streams. We now focus on sample and data analyses, while we build models to test the likely efficacy of mitigation efforts to reduce impacts on UK rivers 🧪

That's a wrap on our @erc.europa.eu @ukri.org @ercrefresh.bsky.social programme 2nd expt.. A very different environment than the chalk stream in our 1st expt. but nonetheless with wonderful biota: Beautiful Demoiselle damselflies fluttering around us, and freshwater limpets grazing our biofilms! 🧪

Our @ukri.org funded @erc.europa.eu REFRESH programme is going well! Chalk stream isotope dosing expt. complete, clay expt. nearly complete with help from our first PhD student, @durham-university.bsky.social graduate Matt McCormack. Peat expt. set-up now underway @bannaubrycheiniog.bsky.social 🧪🐟🌿🐌

Spoke on BBC Radio 4 Farming Today this morning on the implications of the Cunliffe Report for UK farmers and freshwaters, explaining some of the key findings from our @ukri.org funded QUANTUM programme on livestock impacts on www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... 🧪

‪Great opportunity: full @ukri.org funded PhD Studentship with 4 years fees, stipend (£19237 pa) and full Research Training Support Grant, working with Prof Ian Bull, Director of the National Environmental Isotope Facility and my @ercrefresh.bsky.social team! Starts 10/2025 shorturl.at/AJREj 🧪

Great opportunity to win a full @ukri.org funded PhD Studentship with 4 years fees, stipend (£19237 pa) and full Research Training Support Grant, working with Prof Ian Bull, Director of the National Environmental Isotope Facility and my @ercrefresh.bsky.social team! Starts 10/2025 shorturl.at/AJREj

Challenging but fun @erc.europa.eu and @ukri.org science now underway! We next add snails to the jars at 96 h, and return to collect them with remaining biofilms and bryophytes at 192 h. Looking forward to @mgenner.bsky.social joining us at 192 h to sample for our omics work. Roles advertised soon!

This week I helped setting up the mesocosm experiment for the @ercrefresh.bsky.social programme lead by @pennyjohnes.bsky.social with @jameslmcdonald.bsky.social and Charly Briddon. The landscape was a dream.

Our team of 3 PDRAs, 3 research techs and 3 PhD students (5 still tba) will work with me, @mgenner.bsky.social & Mark Beaumont of @bristoluni.bsky.social Biological Sciences, and OGU (Ian Bull), @ukceh.bsky.social Dan Read, Ellie Mackay, Daren Gooddy, @bangoruniversity.bsky.social (Davey Jones).

We've now completed our QUANTUM sampling at 33/60 sites, in SW of England, W England and Wales. Next stop N England and Scotland! By focusing on streams draining sheep, beef and dairy farmland, we are building a national picture of their impacts on UK river water quality to better inform policy.🧪

When livestock have direct access to watercourses, the risk of ecotoxin, pathogen, organic matter and nutrient pollution increases to 100%. Our @ukri.org QUANTUM programme sampling found some culprits today..... @acastrocastellon.bsky.social @victoriahussey.bsky.social 🧪🐄🐂

Our @ukri.org QUANTUM national sampling programme is now well underway. Thanks to @acastrocastellon.bsky.social for help with the SW England sites, Sydney Enns and @victoriahussey.bsky.social for prepping the kit, and my husband who helped with the Welsh sites - great cow poo sampling skills! 🧪🐄🐑🐂

Harmful algal blooms, fueled by nutrient pollution and rising temperatures, threaten marine life and human health by releasing toxins into water and seafood. We need #ClimateAction and stronger efforts to cut nitrogen and phosphorus pollution.

As we finish our NERC QUANTUM field experiments and move on to upscaling and modelling work at national scale, we'd like to thank the residents of Rickford and our hugely helpful farmers, Paul and Roger Keel for their support. We'll return in the autumn to tell you what we've found!

Last day in the field, returning our NERC QUANTUM field kit to the @bristoluni.bsky.social Fenswood field store where we bumped into our Aviation Engineering colleagues flying drones. They kindly agreed to fly over our field site producing aerial images for our future presentations. Great teamwork!🧪

Yes indeed! Great work from the team and, if I may say so, brave work from the PI who had to stand in the outer field and hold the theodolite while the cattle licked her coat, while Prof Andy Binley surveyed in the site - 1st principle for PIs: #neveraskyourteamtodosomethingyouwouldn'tdoyourself 🧪🐮

Final day of sampling today for the @bristoluni.bsky.social team at our NERC QUANTUM field site, and the @exeter.ac.uk QUANTUM team completing their field ecotoxin exposure experiments. This was a fantastic field site for the project. Many thanks to the farmers and villagers for their support.

We had warm sunny weather when we wanted rain for our experiments and now, when we want dry weather to for soil coring and site decommissioning, we had very heavy rain all day. Even so, 62 coring sites surveyed in and cored for our NERC QUANTUM ecotoxin, pathogen, organic and nutrient analyses! 🧪

Research field work has its perks, one gets to be supervised by livestock! Here marking the plots and core sampling points with @pennyjohnes.bsky.social lead of @QUANTUM freshwater and REFRESH projects. James McDonald assisting today.

More fieldwork fun for QUANTUM and REFRESH teams today. A visit from Welsh Rivers Union, then started site decommissioning following completion of our experiments, and marked up a sample grid for soil coring on our slurry amendment plots next week. Curious cattle made leaving the site tricky! 🧪🐄🐮

There is so much work invested on this experiment that seeing it running is a joy!

More knowledge exchange and training on the NERC QUANTUM isotope dosing platform, with researchers working with us from the ERC REFRESH and NERC MICRO-CYCLE teams as we collect our 96 hr gas, biofilm and moss samples, and add snails for the final 96 hr period. Final 192 hr samples next week! 🧪

Meet Dr Tolulope Lawrence, one of four PDRAs on our NERC QUANTUM project, who has been presenting at SETAC on her work with Prof Barbara Kasprzyk Hordern, University of Bath, on the analysis of our livestock excreta and freshwater samples for 200 ecotoxin compounds. Great work Tolu! 🧪

Doing great science requires a great team. Introducing Dr Ana Castro-Castellon, PDRA on the NERC QUANTUM project, freshwater ecology and chemistry specialist with field electronics skills. Pictured after getting all 45 motors working on our stream isotope experiment. Great to work with you, Ana! 🧪🪛🛠️

Our final NERC QUANTUM isotope dosing experiment is now underway! Exciting science. Looking forward to comparing May results with Nov expt outcomes, and discovering the impacts of warming effects to RCP 6.0 on stream processing and biotic uptake of livestock-derived DOM as a nutrient resource.🧪🌿🐌💧

Nearly all our NERC QUANTUM postdocs and techs on site today to finalise our warming experiment design, and set up Chemcatchers and maintain fish and invert populations in our field ecotox exposure experiments. Universities of Bristol, Exeter and Bath #multidisciplinary #collaboration #fun-science

Great to have Hannah Champion of JBA Consulting in the field with us today as we fine-tune our warming approach for our final forthcoming @nerc.bsky.social QUANTUM isotope dosing experiments next week. Informing our collaborative modelling with field experience!🧪

Great day setting up a pilot stream warming experiment for our upcoming NERC QUANTUM isotope experiment with our newest recruit, Dr James McDonald who has just joined our NERC funded ERC Advanced Grant REFRESH team. Knowledge transfer at its best!🧪

Lovely day in the field, setting up our final field experiments exploring stream ecotoxin exposure for fish and invertebrates, slurry contaminant transfers from land to stream, and livestock excreta as an organic nutrient source for biofilms, mosses and snails.🧪

Our final www.quantumfreshwaters.org slurry amendment experiment has now started, and we're hoping the promised rain arrives to flush the plots to the stream this time! In parallel our @uoebiosciences.bsky.social team are gearing up for our field ecotoxin exposure experiments! 🧪

Prof Davey Jones from Bangor University has kicked things off at our launch today. Davey is talking about the potential use of WBE for monitoring AMR in healthcare & environmental settings.

Congratulations to our latest NERC FRESH CDT student, Katharine Moss, for successfully defending her PhD thesis on 'Understanding The Ecological Impact Of Sewage Effluent On Freshwater Environments', jointly supervised by @ukceh.bsky.social @ogu-bristol.bsky.social and @pennyjohnes.bsky.social 🧪🎉

Lovely day for our NERC QUANTUM project, with thanks to Nellie Farhoudi from our NERC MICRO-CYCLE team for her help: sampling, calibrating sondes and setting-up for our final experiments determining livestock impacts on freshwaters - 1) slurry amendments, 2) ecotoxin exposure, 3) isotope dosing 🧪🐟🌿🐌

The #NERC QUANTUM freshwaters team in the field today, with the second of 3 slurry amendments to land 40m and 10m from the stream, ready for our April field experiment. Precision spreading following official Government guidance gov.uk/guidance/sto.... Will increase to 40m help reduce risks? 🧪

We are seeking a Postdoctoral Researcher (PDRA) in Freshwater Ecosystem Ecology researching the role of organic matter as a nutrient resource in freshwater ecosystems. A 4.5 year role with great training opportunites in isotope ecology and mesocosm experimental science www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DLU610/p...

Deadline for applications is 28 February 2025. Do get in touch if you have any questions.

In addition to the 3 x 4-yr PhD studentships and 4.5-yr Senior Research Associate in Biogeochemistry recently advertised, I am pleased to announce we now have a 3.5 year role now open for a Specialist Technician in Biogeochemistry in the same team. 🧪🌿🐌🐟 www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

www.jobs.ac.uk/search/?keyw... @pennyjohnes.bsky.social is hiring a Senior Research Associate in Biogeochemistry to work on a ERC Advanced Grant to work on metabolic pathways controlling nutrient and dissolved organic matter uptake in freshwaters (4.5 years) #biogeochemistry #aquatic #freshwater

Exciting opportunity for a Senior Research Associate in Biogeochemistry to work on my ERC REFRESH Advanced Grant. This is a 4.5 yr role, where we will be exploring the metabolic pathways controlling nutrient and dissolved organic matter uptake in freshwater ecosystems. 🧪🐌🐟🌿https://shorturl.at/UY9Kc

We have three 4-year UKRI PhD studentships now available under the ERC REFRESH programme Researching the role of dissolved organic matter (DOM) as a nutrient resource in freshwater systems. Do get in touch via the links if you have an questions! Details here: www.findaphd.com/phds/program... 🧪

Following the examples of @katharinehayhoe.com and @drsturobinson.bsky.social I've created my Bluesky Roast. Freshwater Whisperer of Bluesky! blueskyroast.com/roast/pennyj... Though 'The Real You' description is probably the most accurate, especially the last of my secret powers...

Following a tip from @mattmacleod.bsky.social I've migrated c.25% of my old X posts over here, including some with links to past meetings/jobs/PhDs in my group. These won't be active. I will be posting new opportunities for 3 PDRAs, 2 Techs and 3 PhDs soon, here, on jobs.ac.uk and FindaPhD.com! 🧪

A massive review of water regulation is England and Wales is underway. But nationalisation won’t be considered, confirms Ivy Manning, team leader at the secretariat for the commission leading the review. Says that was agreed by commission chair Sir Jon Cunliffe and env sec Steve Reed.