Her research field is in Ecotoxicology. Obtaining realistic predictions and measurements of how existing and emerging chemical stressors potentially affect our natural environment and the organisms living therein is essential to provide the necessary tools to assess and mitigate ecosystem threats.

More information about Martina Vijver

Leader of the research line "Chemical stressors and impacts on biodiversity"

Brief summary of research over the last years

Her research field is in Ecotoxicology. Obtaining realistic predictions and measurements of how existing and emerging chemical stressors potentially affect our natural environment and the organisms living therein is essential to provide the necessary tools to assess and mitigate ecosystem threats. While the basic idea is straightforward, attaining reliable estimates on the fate, the actual uptake and effects of chemicals on species and their overall effect on ecosystems has proven to be notoriously challenging. This research line is aimed is to predict the impact of environmental stressors across increasing environmental complexity and spatiotemporal scales.

Her passion is to work on these innovative challenges in which some aspects are a must for her: that is a. field representative setting and accounting for dynamics is key, b. the whole chain of fate and behaviour, uptake and elimination, responses should be considered, c. preferably quantitative, d. integrative. Data collection will be done following different approaches, ranging from lab-derived experiments, to outdoor mesocosms, to in situ experiments in the field, monitoring data and secondary data analyses. She applies an ecosystems approach in part of our work, next to work at the individual species level, and maintain  mechanistic work using sub-cellular and molecular level (see http://ecotox.science.leidenuniv.nl) using diverse communities and ecosystems. For all research, models are derived using the topic specific knowledge on processes and mechanisms.

Focus currently: engineered nanomaterials, pesticides, metals, microplastics

Publications