Jennifer Laurent Postdoctoral fellow

Postdoc, Department of Environmental Science

I am an environmental scientist specialising in biodiversity, ecotoxicology, and stress ecology in aquatic and coastal ecosystems. My research focuses on understanding how multiple stressors, including contaminants and hydrological changes, impact freshwater and estuarine biodiversity, using a multidisciplinary approach that integrates ecology, hydrobiology, contaminant chemistry, land cover and molecular biomarkers.

I currently work on the European project DESTRESS (DEciphering temporal trends and safe operating spaces for river biodiversity within the context of multiple STRESSors), which aims to:

• Assess biodiversity trends in European rivers and streams: Analysing long-term monitoring data to understand how species communities respond to multiple environmental stressors.
• Link biodiversity patterns to catchment characteristics: Extracting land cover and land use data for each river subcatchment using E-HYPE, CLC, and LUCAS datasets to characterise catchment features and identify potential drivers of ecological change.
• Identify safe operating spaces for freshwater biodiversity: Quantifying ecological thresholds and environmental limits to guide sustainable water management under changing hydrological and contaminant conditions.

My previous work during my PhD at LEMAR (France) focused on stress ecology and ecological quality in the Seine estuary and Brittany coastal rivers, using the flounder (Platichthys flesus) as a sentinel species. This research combined catchment geography, hydrobiology, pollutant chemistry, and proteomics to identify bioindicators of ecological health in estuarine systems subjected to multiple stressors.