Doctoral student position in Environmental Science, at the Department of Physical Geograhy and Ecosystem Science

Work description

The successful applicant for this position will setup and run the forest ecosystem model ForSAFE in different climate regions in Sweden. The effects on processes and indicators of different scenarios in different climate regions will be analyzed and discussed. Stakeholders from four national agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Forest Agency, the Energy Agency and the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management, will be involved throughout the project, and will contribute to the choice of scenarios as well as to the analysis and discussion of the results. Barriers to utilization of modelling results will be identified and procedures for improved stakeholder interaction will be developed, tested and evaluated.

The project will contribute to the utilization of the full potential of dynamic ecosystem models in general, and ForSAFE in particular, in the national policy-making on sustainable forestry related to soil and surface water effects. This can provide decision support, both in managing the national environmental objectives, and in the design of new recommendations in forestry.

The project is truly interdisciplinary, bringing science and social science together. The PhD student will have two supervisors from science, Cecilia Akselsson, Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science at Lund university (main supervisor) and Salim Belyazid, Department of Physical Geography at Stockholm university, and one supervisor representing social science, Åsa Knaggård, Department of Political Science, Lund university.

The project will contribute to, and be carried out within the framework of Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate (BECC), a Strategic Research Area (SRA) at Lund University and University of Gothenburg. The work will be performed in close collaboration with the research groups in Lund and Stockholm, and will contribute to the last phase of the strong research environment QWARTS (Quantifying weathering rates for Sustainable Forestry). Interactions with stakeholders from national agencies will be important throughout the project. The PhD students in Environmental Science are located at the different departments at the faculty of Science. The PhD education will thus include interactions with other PhD students across subjects and departments.

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Last application date: 1 August 2016 

Doctoral student position in Environmental Science, at the Department of Geology

Work description: 

In the Baltic Sea region, several periods of warmth and large environmental change have occurred since the most recent glaciation, and there is evidence that these periods were also marked by deoxygenation. Reconstructing past oxygenation conditions is difficult because few quantitative proxies exist for oxygen levels, and there are currently many efforts to improve and develop better proxies for past oxygenation of bottom waters. Recently, we have focused on Mn/Ca in benthic foraminifera as a potential proxy variable for low oxygen conditions.

In this project we plan to use a combination of inductively coupled plasma (ICP) - and synchrotron-based methods to analyze Mn concentration, distribution, and speciation and other trace elements in foraminiferal shells.

The objectives of this work are: 1) to quantitatively reconstruct marine environmental conditions, focusing primarily on bottom water oxygenation in the Baltic Sea region, during periods of warming and large environmental change and 2) improve the tools we use to reconstruct past environments by using a combination of experimental work and synchrotron - and plasma based methods.

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Last application date: 1 August 2016 

Doctoral student in Environmental Science, at the Centre for Environmental and Climate Research, LU:
Modelling insect-based ecosystem services in agriculture

This a four-year PhD project in Environmental Science located within an attractive interdisciplinary research environment at the Centre for Environmental and Climate Research, with opportunities for collaboration with research groups across Europe. The project is rooted within ecological research but offers unique possibilities to collaborate beyond disciplinary boundaries to advance ecosystem service research.

Job assignments

A productive agriculture that is sustainable and less dependent on inputs such as synthetic fertilisers and pesticides is a key societal challenge. Current research efforts are aiming to establish the scientific basis and applicability of ecological intensification of agriculture in different regions of Europe. Ecosystem service models for pollination and biological control of pests are increasingly used to link investments in natural capital (maintaining populations of beneficial insects) to expected benefits. Major challenges are the transfer of models from one region to another, from the current climatic and socio-economic context to the future, and to taking into account year-to-year variability. The project will address this by: (1) calibrating and validating ecosystem service models using empirical data and expert networks from across Europe, (2) applying combinations of different climate and socio-economic scenarios to assess supply and demand of ecosystem services, and (3) considering how different approaches to consider uncertainty, including extreme events (climatic, socio-economic), compare in terms of assessing and communicating uncertainty, using quantitative risk assessment tools.

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Last application date: 15 September 2016

Doctoral student in Environmental Science, CEC: Robust analysis

Work description:

The project will use case studies from environmental management with high relevance to current policy, such as the European Common Agricultural Policy, and the EU Directive of Invasive Alien Species. The student will be part of an inter-disciplinary research environment with expertise and experience in ecological processes and policy measures associated with the case-studies.

This is a PhD project in Environmental science that combines applied statistics and mathematics with quantitative ecology, environmental management and risk analysis. The position is placed at the Lund University Center for Environmental and Climate Research and the Biodiversity unit at Department of Biology. In order to meet the demands of the cross-disciplinary nature of this PhD-project, the student will get supervision from Environmental Science (Ullrika Sahlin), Biology (Henrik Smith), Applied Statistics (Johan Lindström and Matthias Troffaes, Department of Mathematical Sciences, Durham University, United Kingdom), and Philosophy (Nils-Eric Sahlin, Department of Medical Ethics, Faculty of Medicine, Lund University).

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Last application date: 3 October 2016