Community Ecologist

Contract Type:

Fixed Term contract up to May 2026

This is a 3-year fixed-term, full-time postdoctoral position with a possibility to be extended for an additional year. The successful candidate will play a key role in delivering an exciting new NERC-funded project “IDEAL UK FIRE: Toward Informed Decisions on Ecologically Adaptive Land management for mitigating UK FIRE”. The project aims to determine the environmental costs and benefits of widely applied wildfire management tools on ecosystem carbon balance, carbon climate feedbacks, habitat quality and biodiversity in UK fire prone landscapes. This knowledge will be embedded in accredited land management training to support the development of site management plans that achieve desired landscape carbon and biodiversity benefits.

Working with the wider project team and supported by dedicated technicians, the post will be responsible for quantifying the ecological impact of fuel management strategies (burning, mowing, managed succession) on the biodiversity of fire prone UK landscapes - from dry sandy lowland heaths to organic rich saturated peatlands. First, the position will lead on the assessment of a UK successional chronosequence of fuel management interventions, combined with the direct assessment of managed interventions undertaken during the project. This will target the examination of impact on plant, bird and bat biodiversity and invertebrate biomass. Second, it will analyse existing biodiversity survey data across the landscape-scale for different fuel management interventions. And third, to understand how each management scenario influences landscape biodiversity, the successful candidate will use an ecological mechanistic model to predict the long-term trajectories of biodiversity for different functional groups. 

The post holder should have strong skills in community and/or population ecology, field surveys, the statistical analysis of large data sets, ecological modelling, and the use of statistical software such as R. A background in natural history would be advantageous.

Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications and Experience Required

• Skills and experience in the design and execution of field surveys of species occurrence and abundance.
• Skills and experience in the statistical analysis of large data sets. The capability to consider the most appropriate analysis and the capability to implement this analysis using for example R.
• Some experience or knowledge of mechanistic (process-based) modelling.
• The effective communication of research findings through the publication of high-quality journal papers and conference presentations.
• A PhD in a relevant discipline and a broad knowledge of environmental science, landscape ecology and/or wildfire

Informal enquires to Nicholas Kettridge, email: n.kettridge@bham.ac.uk

To download the full job description and details of this position and submit an electronic application online please click on the Apply Online button above or visit our careers website; https://edzz.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/CX_6001/job/1613/?utm_medium=jobshare

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