Large Scale Forest Succession Modeling We offer a 1 year, renewable for a 2nd year, Postdoctoral fellowship for excellent candidate to lead the design and building of a large scale spatial simulation model of successional dynamics of boreal forest, with an emphasis on western Canada.
Certification agencies, NGOs, and governments increasingly require that forest companies prove that their forest management activities are consistent with the Natural or Historical Range of Variation (NRV or HRV) of the ecosystems being managed. To do this, its necessary to reconstruct distributions of past landscapes in terms of age structure and species composition, and project such landscapes into the future under assumptions of forest management, disturbance regime and climate. The objective for this position is to build methodologies for extensive, generalizable, spatially explicit forest succession and regeneration models 1) based on phenomenological and process drivers (e.g., state-transition and growth models) and 2) integrating to the extent possible the disparate and partial sources of available quantitative data. This modelling effort will draw from and build on other complementary modeling efforts in my lab. We are currently building a new simulation platform in R (www.github.com/achubaty/SpaDES) allowing for highly modularized simulation components and scalability using the new generation of Big Data packages. This modularity facilitates testing of models as hypotheses, so different modules can be tested against data. Desired skills: Knowledge of the biological processes of forest succession, reproduction, regeneration, mortality, growth, alternative stable states Proven skills with spatial simulation and ecological modelling (e.g. LANDIS, SORTIE, NetLogo) and with related programming and analysis tools (e.g. R, C++, Python, SELES) , with an interest in advancing modelling technology Quantitative skills for analysis of raw data to estimate unknown parameters Knowledge of the Pattern Oriented Modeling approach for estimation of parameters Large dataset management skills (field data and remote sensed data) Track record of peer reviewed publication Salary and Funding $49,516 - $55,000 per year. The postdoc is jointly funded by the Foothills Research Institute and pending funding from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), plus up to $5000 per year stipend for research (travel, publication costs, etc.). This fellowship is open to a person from any country. Start Date September 1, 2014 or as soon as possible Location Pacific Forestry Center, Victoria, BC, Canada. Victoria is a beautiful harbour city surrounded by the Pacific Ocean on all sides, offering excellent outdoor recreation opportunities on land and the ocean. The city also offers a world class food experience with a combination of a strong and vibrant local food movement and international cuisine. The climate is pleasant all year round. Applicants should submit by email a short statement of interest, a current CV, and the names of three references. For further information, contact me at: [email protected], +1-250-298-2374 More details: http://www.cef-cfr.ca/index.php?n=Membres.EliotMcIntire? userlang=en
