项目介绍

2025年1月10日

Function

Do you want to influence climate policy and promote sustainable land use? Do you want to contribute to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions in the Netherlands? f yes, we may have the perfect opportunity for you!

Drained organic soils are an important source of greenhouse gases worldwide. Also in the low lying areas of the Netherlands drainage of its organic soils, with the aim to enable more intensive usage of the land, leads to oxidation of organic material, significant carbon dioxide release and subsequent land subsidence. As part of climate mitigation policies the Dutch government seeks to reduce these emissions by at least 1 Mton in 2030. In support of these policies, several research research projects funded at (sub-)national level (such as the National Research programme on Greenhouse gas emissions from Fen meadow areas (in Dutch NOBV: https://www.nobveenweiden.nl/) aim to investigate the effects of various mitigation measures on total greenhouse gas balance of the targeted areas.

As a PhD candidate, you will work on the following research topics (relative weight to be determined based on your interest and qualifications):

• contribute to (mobile) greenhouse gas monitoring strategies and their operations, at field to regional scale;
• contribute to further optimising near real time processing of obtained high frequency eddy covariance data to greenhouse gas fluxes at diurnal to inter annual time scales;
• analyse and scale data from multiple locations and transects in relation to explanatory variables from vegetation and soil characteristics, land and water management and climate, not only for carbon dioxide but especially also for methane;
• develop data driven models of regional greenhouse gas balances for the fen meadow areas of the Netherlands under (emission reduction) management;
• develop data-assimilation strategies, i.e. feeding models with near real time observations to continuously constrain model parameters, creating a digital twin of Dutch fen meadow areas;
• analyse the impacts of climate anomalies and climate change on regional greenhouse gas emissions.

Your work will consist of literature studies, analysis of in-situ greenhouse gas exchange data, as well as spatially distributed (satellite) data on vegetation, soil land and water qualities. You will be member of a larger team of scientists based at the partner universities, and technical support staff, within and outside Wageningen UR working on this topic, and have interaction with various partners (water boards, land managers, policy makers, etc.) associated with land based greenhouse gas emissions. Your project results will be disseminated through papers in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings, but using popular media is also encouraged.

Function Requirements

The ideal candidate has:

• A university degree (MSc) in earth or environmental sciences with a strong background in eco-hydrology, micrometeorology, vegetation or soil science
• Experience/affinity with monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions/uptake in the field and from small aircraft,
• Experience/affinity with remote sensing of terrestrial and/or aquatic processes,
• Experience with programming, statistics, machine learning and big data approaches in the context of soil-vegetation-atmosphere interactions
• Excellent writing and oral communication skills in English and strong ambition to publish future work, proficiency in Dutch is considered a pro.
• Standout colleague, who can work independently and who also communicates well with colleagues, and has the potential to (co-)supervise (under)graduate students in their research
• Affinity with stakeholder interaction and cooperation with other scientific subject areas.

Contactinformation

For more information about this position, please contact Dr Ronald W.A. Hutjes, ronald.hutjes@wur.nl , +31 (0)317-48 64 62 or Dr Bart Kruijt, bart.kruijt@wur.nl, +31 (0)317-48 64 40

For more information about the procedure, please contact Noorien Abbas, corporate recruiter, noorien.abbas@wur.nl