Aarhus University

The successful candidate will be embedded in the ECONOVO Centre (PI Jens-Christian Svenning) within the Section for Ecoinformatics & Biodiversity (ECOINF) at the Department of Biology at Aarhus University (AU). The co-lead team will consist of Elizabeth le Roux (AU), Jeppe Aagaard Kristensen (AU) and Klaus Steenberg Larsen (University of Copenhagen, KU) with strong additional support from the remaining WildSoil team (Carsten W. Müller, Technical University of Berlin; Jesper R. Christiansen, KU; Lars Vesterdal, KU) and our international collaborators with strong soil and ecosystem modelling expertise (e.g. Katerina Georgiou, Lawrence Livermore Nat’l Lab (USA); Nick Bouskills, Lawrence Berkeley Nat’l Lab (USA); Ben Smith, Western Sydney University (AUS) and Lund University (Sweden).
ECONOVO is a Centre of Excellence focused on improving our insights into emerging novel ecological conditions and how to steer these conditions towards the most positive outcome possible. ECOINF harbours strong expertise in macroecology, remote sensing, and megafauna and vegetation ecology, as well as in ecology and biodiversity broadly. Together ECONOVO and ECOINF constitute an ambitious, collaborative, interdisciplinary, and highly international research community. Multiple local and international collaborators will be included where relevant. Postdocs and PhD students are encouraged to collaborate within the group, across departments, and with other universities.

Homepage: https://bio.au.dk/en/

This postdoc project will use soil and ecosystem models to predict decadal-centennial scale carbon pool development comparing different rewilding scenarios under predicted climate trajectories. The selected candidate will use data on greenhouse gas exchange, soil C stocks, and quantities and distributions of SOM in fractions of varying persistence from rewilding sites sampled by other WildSoil team members to parameterize and potentially modify one or more state-of-the-art soil models to simulate animals’ regulation of SOM mobilization, storage and persistence. Integrating this model into one or more ecosystem models modified to facilitate animal impacts, e.g. on vegetation carbon allocation, the candidate is expected to compare long-term ecosystem C stock trajectories between different rewilding scenarios, and to evaluate the resistance of stocks to future warmer and more extreme climates. The postdoc is expected to contribute ideas and concepts to the project and lead at least two high-quality papers in this research area. It is also expected that the postdoc contributes to the project’s public outreach and teaching, as well as collaborating with other team members, including students, sharing skills, and helping to solve problems in the postdoc’s area of expertise. The host institution is a hub for zoogeochemistry and rewilding research with project partners in leading modelling environments in Europe and North America. This position would allow for a lot of flexibility to accommodate the life circumstances of the right candidate, provided that the candidate is prepared to spend a meaningful amount of time at the host institution and our partners.

Full description of the job, the team, and how to apply here