21 July 2016 Postdoc Opportunity: Mixed Severity Fire Modeling in the Rocky Mountain Foothills
Many forests of North America are still assumed to have been structured by high-intensity stand-replacing crown fires. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that many—and perhaps most—such forests have actually been structured by mixed severity fire regimes. In such regimes, variation in fire severity within and among creates a diversity of forest types and structures across space and time. While we now understand that fire severity, size and frequency are intimately linked with climate, topography and stand structure (Sikkink and Keane 2012, Miquelajauregui et al. 2016), many of the process details are still lacking. The multi-scale diversity that they create not only generates a large range of habitat types, but likely maintains the landscape in a high-resilience condition. Although we expected that feedbacks and other interactions between fire, climate and vegetation are different in mixed severity than in crown fire regimes, our ability to model these processes and forecast future forest condition, and future fire risk, is limited. We are seeking an excellent postdoctoral fellow to lead the development of a mixed severity fire regime simulation model that will permit forecasting under multi-decadal timescales at regional extents. The intended applications are to integrated land and forest management on a multi-use landscape of roughly 1,000,000 ha in the foothills of southern Alberta, Canada. The work will be conducted as part of multidisciplinary team, integrating data from many sources and disciplines e.g. dendrochronological studies, historical fire maps, remote sensed vegetation and forest management data. The results will ultimately be integrated into a larger spatial simulation modelling framework for western boreal Canada, used as both a research and development tool and for management applications. This Postdoc will be a central part of a multidisciplinary team (E. McIntire UBC/CFS, S. Cumming, U Laval, L. Daniels, UBC; Z. Gedalof, U. Guelph; John Stadt, Gov. Alberta; E.S. Higgs, U. Victoria; D. Andison UBC) addressing the problem of mixed severity fires from social, ecological and dendrochronological perspectives. There is also an important historical component through the Mountain Legacy Project. Our group has created the SpaDES ecosystem of R packages, for developing modular, high performance simulation models integrating multiple processes such as vegetation dynamics, natural disturbances, and forest harvesting. The mixed severity fire regime model will likely be developed in SpaDES. We offer a 1 year Postdoctoral Fellowship at the level of CAD 51,000 per year, plus benefits, with an additional CAD 4000 per year research budget e.g. for travel and publication charges. The position is renewable for a second year, based on performance. This fellowship is open to a person from any country and will be administered through the University of British Columbia. The position is funded by the Government of Alberta. Qualifications: • Experience with spatial simulation modelling and in the analytical methods used to estimate model parameters from data (e.g. statistical modelling, Pattern Oriented Modelling) • Knowledge of fire ecology and fire regime modelling • High level of skills in R programming, with C++ experience being considered an asset • Data management skills • A track record of peer-reviewed publication Start Date: As early as September 15, 2016, as late as January, 2017. Location: Pacific Forestry Center, Canadian Forest Service, Victoria, BC, Canada. Victoria is a beautiful harbour city on the southern tip of Vancouver Island on the Pacific coast of North American. The setting offers excellent outdoor recreation opportunities on land and the ocean. The city also offers a vibrant cultural life, world class food experience with both international cuisine and a strong local food and beverage movement. The Mediterranean climate is pleasant all year round. Resources available: • A very active research environment with an excellent track record in high impact publications. • The development team for the SpaDES simulation modelling package is based here, • Our group has created a local computing cluster of more than 500 cores with >1.5 TB RAM. For very large jobs, we also use the supercomputing clusters of Compute Canada • There are several scientists employed by CFS who have expertise on the Fires (S. Taylor, M-A. Parisien and many others), remote sensing (M. Wulder, J. White), climate (D. McKenney), carbon (W. Kurz, C. Boisvenue), and landscape modeling (E. Campbell, J-N Candau) and are likely available for consultation, datasets, and collaborations as the project develops. Applicants should submit by email a short statement of interest, a sample of their scientific writing, a current CV, and the names of three references. For further information, contact the undersigned: Eliot McIntire, Adjunct Prof UBC, Research Scientist CFS [email protected], 1-250-298-2374 http://www.cef-cfr.ca/index.php?n=Membres.EliotMcIntire Steve Cumming, Associate Professor, Sciences du bois et de la forêt, Université Laval [email protected] http://www.cef-cfr.ca/index.php?n=Membres.StevenGCumming
