Announcement of PhD position
The International PhD School of Biodiversity Sciences (ISOBIS) has a PhD position available for the following PhD project.
Title: Climate change impacts on global biodiversity.
Supervisors: Prof. Carsten Rahbek (CRahbek at bi dot ku dot dk) and Senior Researcher Miguel Araújo (maraujo at mncn dot csic dot es).
Affiliation: University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid (CSIC), Spain.
Period: Three years, starting 1 Jan. 2007.
Salary: Starting at 43.000 € in the first year.
Application: More information available soon at http://www.isobis.org
Deadline: 1 Oct. 2006.
Summary:
There is ample evidence that species across a range of taxonomic groups are changing their geographical distributions in response to observed climate changes. During the course of this PhD an attempt will be made to (i) estimate the impact of climate change on distributions of selected species; ii) measure the effectiveness of protected areas to conserve selected species under a range of climate change scenarios; and (iii) provide innovative reserve selection methods to identify important areas for the conservation of species subject to climate change.
Organisational details:
The PhD student will split his/her time between the University of Copenhagen and the Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid. In the first 12 months the student will attend PhD courses provided by the University of Copenhagen and will prepare the biological and climate data needed for the analyses. The student will also get acquaint with the literature, whilst starting to develop the conceptual framework for gap analysis and reserve selection. In the following 18 months the student will be based in the Madrid, where he/she will learn the ensemble forecasting skills necessary to model responses of species distributions to climate change. Finally, in the last six months of the project, the student will be based in Copenhagen.
We ask: – Experience in GIS, data analysis and statistics. – Knowledge of a modern low level programming language (e.g., Visual Basic, JAVA, Delphi, Fortran, C++) or higher level languages (e.g., MatLab, S-Plus, R, etc.). – A quantitative background and a BSc/MSc in Biology, Environmental Sciences, Geography, or related topics. – Proven track record of scientific publications. – Ability to work and communicate within a research team. – English as a first or second language combined with excelent writing skills.
