USGS Mendenhall Postdoctoral Research Opportunity 15-34. Quantifying the potential future impacts of energy resource development
The demand for energy, mineral, and water resources has increased dramatically in recent years and will likely continue to do so. Future development will inevitably encounter trade-offs, potentially including cumulative environmental and socioeconomic effects; informed decision making requires adaptive ecosystem-based management that considers a range of land-use options and the possible impacts (both positive and negative) that could result from management decisions. Research under this Opportunity is expected to address the question of how to quantify the possible ecological, social, water-related, and other impacts of energy resource development. The objective is to conduct a pilot study that links fundamental energy resource information with data and relationships pertaining to potential development impacts in order to inform questions regarding development trade-offs. The successful applicant will have substantial flexibility in defining a specific focus, and on how to best define, research, and solve the problem. Potential research foci include: (1) infrastructure (spatial relationships among roads, well pads, ecological, geologic, and water features), (2) costs and benefits of developing versus not developing particular resources, (3) quantitative linkage to ecosystem services, (4) renewable energy development, (5) quantification of particular ecological or other impacts, (6) development of case studies in areas of current or potential energy development. This work is anticipated to draw on some or all of these existing elements: (1) USGS petroleum assessments (geologically-based probabilistic estimates of technically recoverable oil and gas resources), (2) a Monte-Carlo-based framework (Haines et al., 2014) for linking USGS petroleum assessments with potential impacts, (3) a “footprint” model for anticipating petroleum-development-related infrastructure, and (4) the Artificial Intelligence for Ecosystem Services (ARIES, Villa et al., 2014) framework for modeling impacts to specific ecosystem service endpoints. The successful applicant will likely benefit from computational (coding) experience, as well as in-depth knowledge in any or all of the related fields – landscape ecology, water resources, geology, and petroleum engineering. The project currently supports one post-doctoral fellow and we are searching for a second. Please contact the research advisors with questions, and to discuss research proposals. Proposed Duty Station: Denver, CO Financials: Starting salary $74,587 (approx.), Research funds $TBD, as needed for proposed work. Areas of Ph.D.: Geology, ecology, geophysics, geography, environmental sciences, or comparable disciplines. Research Advisor(s): Seth Haines, (303) 236-5709, shai...@usgs.gov; Darius Semmens, (303) 578-6966, dsemm...@usgs.gov; Jay Diffendorfer, (303) 236-5369, jediffendor...@usgs.gov; Ken Bagstad, (303) 236-1330, kjbags...@usgs.gov; Steve Garman, (303) 236-1353, slgar...@usgs.gov Mendenhall program, application information, etc: http://geology.usgs.gov/postdoc/ Research opportunity: http://geology.usgs.gov/postdoc/opps/2015/15-34%20Haines.htm Deadlines for applications is Feb 17, 2015.
