Dr. Penny Johnes

Biography

Penny Johnes is an environmental scientist with a background in biogeochemistry and aquatic systems, focusing on the impacts of food production and environmental change on the quality of inland and coastal waters for the past 30 years. She has provided advice to a range of UK Government and international agencies concerning nutrient enrichment in waters and its consequences for ecosystem health, as well as effective strategies for controlling nutrient flux from land-based sources to waters. Currently, she is a member of the UNECE Task Force Reactive Nitrogen Expert Panel and several advisory committees, including Natural England and Defra. Johnes is particularly interested in the role of dissolved organic matter in driving biodiversity loss in freshwater ecosystems and is actively working to develop holistic management strategies to tackle multiple stressors in freshwater catchments. Her research emphasizes the quantitative importance of organic and particulate fractions of nitrogen and phosphorus in total nutrient loads and investigates the effects of extreme flow conditions on nutrient cycling. Additionally, she has ongoing projects focused on characterizing the flux of dissolved organic matter in freshwater systems under various climatic controls, funded by significant grants from the NERC and the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Research Interests

Experience