About Marc Nijboer

Nutrients stimulate the growth of crops, which secures our food supply. Still, excess nutrients within our streams causes eutrophication and losses in biodiversity. What is the optimum nutrient application for crop growth without negative effect to our biodiversity? Marc Nijboer tries to find this optimum at Deltares by researching healthy water and subsurface systems.

Marc is a PhD student within the GREENHOOD-project. During his PhD, he researches the nutrient removal and retention dynamics of woodchip bioreactors, sedimentation ponds, and integrated buffer zones (i.e., Nature Based Solutions). Therefore, he combines fieldwork, labwork, data analysis, and modelling to understand, compare, and predict the nutrient dynamics of different measures that improve our water quality. Marc: “My goal is to help policy makers, regional water authorities, and farmers to make a calculated decision for the best solutions within their region”. He does this research in collaboration with KWR and Wageningen University.

Before his PhD, Marc studied at Utrecht University and worked at Arcadis. Here he focussed on the interplay between hydrology and water chemistry. At Arcadis, he build a model that could predict the nutrient dynamics within agricultural fields. This helped him to improve his understanding of the complex interplay of climate, soil, water, crops, and land management.