Image

 ![Coastal research landscape used as the Northmoor University hero image.](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2026-01/camilo-botia-k4vFDPJoDZk-unsplash.1600x1200.jpg.avif?itok=ujHvC8nC)

 

 



Image

 ![Coastal research landscape used as the Northmoor University hero image.](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2026-01/camilo-botia-k4vFDPJoDZk-unsplash.1600x1200.jpg.avif?itok=ujHvC8nC)

 

 



Position title

Associate Professor of Environmental Science

 

Person type

faculty

 

 

Email

c.ndungu@northmoor.edu

 

Clara Ndungu's research is on contaminant transport in estuaries. An estuary mixes fresh water and salt water, river sediment and marine sediment, and inputs from every land use in the catchment. It also traps things: material that would disperse in open water settles out and stays.

Her group's recent survey of the Aldwych estuary mapped microplastic concentrations across twenty-eight stations and found that three sheltered inlets held concentrations an order of magnitude above the rest of the system. The inlets are not near the obvious sources. They are where the circulation puts things.

That result has been useful in a way she did not anticipate. It has changed where the regional monitoring program samples, on the reasonable grounds that measuring the well-flushed parts of an estuary tells you mostly about flushing.

Ndungu teaches ENVS 250 Water Quality and Pollution and ENVS 320 Estuarine Systems. She supervises graduate students in environmental chemistry and estuarine science, and works closely with the marine policy group when a finding turns into a regulatory question, which is often.



ORCID profile

[ORCID profile](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3381-9074)