Hello Kara. Thank you for joining this edition of GeoTalk! Could you tell our readers a little bit about yourself and your background? Thank you, Simon. I am excited to join you for the interview. I grew up in the middle of Germany in Bad Homburg, close to Frankfurt. After school, I travelled through Australia with occasional jobs, and after one year, I decided to return to Germany to study chemis ...[Read More]
In July 2021, the Benelux area, Germany, and France experienced heavy rainfall followed by mass flooding, causing widespread damage. Along the vast quantities of plastic swept along the riverbanks, Rahel Hauk, a researcher from Wageningen University, conducted fieldwork to assess the impact of the flood event on plastic deposition. Amidst the debris, Hauk and her colleagues noticed a large volume ...[Read More]
Hi Freija. Thank you for joining us today! Could you tell our readers a bit about yourself before we dive in? Hi Simon, thanks for inviting me! I’m a marine scientist based in the UK specialising in microplastic pollution but my work has taken me across many different disciplines from physical geography to ecotoxicology. Recently my research has focused on trying to understand what impacts the tra ...[Read More]
It appears that plastics have well and truly invaded even our most inaccessible environments: the deepest point in the ocean (the Mariana trench) and the highest mountain peak in the world (Mt. Everest) both contain pieces of plastic from human activities miles away. With plastic waste flowing into aquatic ecosystems expected to nearly triple by 2040, it is safe to say that nature is in “emergency ...[Read More]
Hi Céline. Thank you for joining us today. Congratulations on winning the 2022 Ocean Sciences Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award! Could you tell our readers a bit about yourself and your research? As of just a few months ago, I am tenured! My exact job title is “Senior Lecturer in climatology” at the University of Gothenburg, in southwest Sweden. Originally I am from France, and I a ...[Read More]
Hi Tim, thanks for talking with us today, can you start by telling us a little about yourself and your research background? As experimental hydrologist I aim to provide reliable data to solve water-related societal challenges. For over a decade I have been working on developing new, better or cheaper measurement methods to quantify components of the water cycle. My first projects focused on estima ...[Read More]
Marine plastic is just one of the many challenges facing the future of our oceans. For many years researchers have been attempting to understand this problem, but it can be surprising to learn how many things are still unknown, even in oceans we may think of as being familiar. The Mediterranean Sea is one such place, where this photograph was taken by David Jones just off the coast of Malta.   ...[Read More]
Lucie Parsons, a ten-year old girl from the small village of Walkington, in England, is on a personal mission to save the environment from plastic pollution. After seeing on the BBC Blue Planet II documentary how litter in the ocean is damaging ecosystems, she decided to take action. Now she gives talks and is co-researcher in her mother’s PhD on climate change and the youth voice. Lucie has come ...[Read More]
Awareness around the prevalence of plastic pollution, particularly in our oceans, has been growing over the last few years. This is not surprising considering that plastic production has surged from 15 million tonnes in 1964 to 311 million tonnes in 2014 and models have shown that this number will double again within the next 20 years in a business as usual scenario. Furthermore, research conducte ...[Read More]
Drawing inspiration from popular stories on our social media channels, as well as unique and quirky research news, this monthly column aims to bring you the best of the Earth and planetary sciences from around the web. Major Story With June being the month when the world’s oceans are celebrated with World Ocean Day (8th June) and the month when the UN’s Ocean Conference took place, it seemed apt t ...[Read More]