James Lofty

First day at @kit.edu Insitute for Water and Environment on a @humboldt-foundation.de fellowship!

Looking forward to conducting some super interesting #plastic #transport experiments in the next two years ! 🌊 ➡️ 🥤

Some photos of the sampling sites located in the Brecon Beacons over the last two years of monitoring

New publication!🚨

We show that a river sourced from the UK's largest coal mine (Ffos-y-fran, Wales) can carry between 6,912 - 262,656 #microplastics /day🌊➡️🥤

This fluctuation is regulated by the #hydraulic and #hydrological processes in the catchment

doi.org/10.1016/j.en...

Abstracts open for our #microplastic and #plastic transport Special Sessions at #IAHRWorldCongress until 15th January!
Sign up below 2025.iahr.org/Home/Program...

A demonstration of the importance of using Absolute Density over just polymer type. The bottles contain varying amounts of air, water, and sand, and so behave differently in the environment.

🎉 New Paper Alert! ✨

“Plastic as a Sediment: A universal and objective practical solution…”

Now we can assess plastic as a sediment and better understand the relationship of its physical properties with its environmental distribution! ✨It’s so exciting!✨

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

📣
Great opportunity to present your work on #plastics in #water!
Thanks #IAHR for the space, and @jameslofty.bsky.social and Matthias Kramer for making this happen!

We have a Special Session at #IAHRWorldCongress on the Transport Dynamics of #PlasticPollution and #Microplastics in Aquatic Environments 🌊➡️🥤

Singapore, June 22-27th 2025

Abstracts open until 15th January!

2025.iahr.org/Home/Program...

Dr. Matthias Kramer
@arivarrani.bsky.social

Many thanks to my co-authors:
Prof. Catherine Wilson (Cardiff University)
Dr. Pablo Ouro(University of Manchester)
@naturecomms.bsky.social
@cardiffuni.bsky.social

Overall, these complex dynamics caused a REDUCTION in settling velocities for plates with #biofilms by up to 12% - despite biofouled plastics being denser.

These results are critical, showing that dynamics and biofilms play an important role in overall plastic transport 🌊➡️🥤

We believe these differences are caused by a slight shift in the plastic's centre of gravity due to the heterogenous growth of #biofilms

This cause the #biofouled plastics to transition from a symmetrical oscillation settling pattern to an asymmetrical one.

We show that particles with #biofilms moved further away (laterally) from their drop position, compared to their pristine equivalent

This also triggered higher oscillatory frequencies, larger amplitudes and greater Strouhal numbers

We show that #biofouling triggered plastic to exhibit more chaotic and random settling behaviours

See below in green below for a biofouled plastic plate compared to the pristine plastics in blue

Next, we track the settling of plastics in water using a 3D synchronised multi-camera set up.

This allows us to gain a full characterisation of the different settling modes and the behaviour of the settling #biofouled and #pristine plastics

First, we leave plastics in river water for 4 months to grow sticky #biofilms.

We identify the #biofilm colonisation on the surface of plastics plates using a crystal violet dye.

We then characterise the the changes in plastic density, surface roughness and hydrophilicity

🚨New publication!🚨

We show that #biofilm colonisation cause #macroplastic #pollution to exhibit more chaotic settling behaviours and slower settling velocities in #water 🌪️🥤🦠

More below👇

doi.org/10.1038/s432...

New #microplastics paper alert. Led by the awesome Dr Freija Mendrik, from her PhD work, we show that 86 % of microplastics are transported below the water surface. For representative samples, sample at 0.5-0.6 of the depth
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Hey! This is great! Could i added as well ?

I haven't seen one yet, so I created a Plastic, Microplastic, etc starter pack. Let me know if you want to be added or know of others to add. go.bsky.app/Ld46AhM

We dropped over 8,000 pieces of litter into a fake river to fight plastic pollution Understanding how plastic pollution moves in rivers is key to effective cleanup strategies.

Recently transferred from the dreaded Twitter ! Will be posting about #plasticpollution #transport, #microplastics, #rivers, #sediments and #engineering!

An overview of our work on plastic transport in rivers here in @theconversation.com: theconversation.com/we-dropped-o...