Senior Research Associate – Modelling Ecological Restoration of European Forests

An exciting opportunity exists for a terrestrial ecologist or ecological modeller to contribute to the Horizon funded project: SUPERB (https://forest-restoration.eu/). The SUPERB project will support the ambitious upscaling of ecosystem recovery targets in the EU Green Deal. Our program seeks to prove gains in biodiversity assets spurred by these restoration actions through a task on monitoring, reporting and verification of biodiversity ecosystem services (MRV-BES). The applicant will apply community-based ecological models to discriminate between different types of forests at different stages of recovery and predict the expected trajectories of ecological succession. This task will combine high-resolution remote sensing methods from UAVs with eDNA sampling and acoustic surveys to describe the condition of forests. The team will be led by Dr Alex Bush at Lancaster University (UK), and co-leaders Professor Simon Creer at Bangor University (UK) and Professor Rubén Valbuena at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).

We seek an applicant with a PhD degree and expertise in any of the disciplines relevant to the post duties: including ecology, forestry, remote sensing and ecological modelling. Experience in forest ecology, collection of forest data or remote sensing data from drones or otherwise, genomics or DNA sampling, collection and processing of animal acoustic data, and species distribution or ecological community modelling, or any combination of the above are all desirable qualities but none of them an eligibility requirement alone.

The candidate must have demonstrated experience and skills in statistical inference, R programming language and scientific writing. Knowledge about topics such as numerical programming, big data processing analysis (high-performance computing, parallel and/or bash processing), and statistical modelling are desirable qualities. The applicant is expected take their initiative and manage their own work both independently and within the team group. Communication in English is essential to liaise effectively with other members of the group in Bangor and SLU. This post is based at Lancaster University, but will also involve travelling for fieldwork during the spring & summer of 2024. We anticipate interviews will be held in November 2023 to start a contract in December lasting up to 24 months.

In your application please include a 2-page CV and Cover Letter discussing your interest in this position, how you may seek to develop an area of research, how it fits with your career goals and the skills you have developed that are relevant to this post. In addition, please take care to address each of the points in the Personal Specification (~50-200 words), including examples of your experience and expertise. Informal enquiries to Dr Alex Bush alex.bush@lancaster.ac.uk or Prof Rubén Valbuena ruben.valbuena@slu.se

Unless specified otherwise, all advertised roles are UK based.  

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