Postdoc position in Soil Biogeochemistry

EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, is one of the most dynamic university campuses in Europe and ranks among the top 20 universities worldwide. The EPFL employs more than 6,000 people supporting the three main missions of the institutions: education, research and innovation. The EPFL campus offers an exceptional working environment at the heart of a community of more than 16,000 people, including over 12,000 students and 4,000 researchers from more than 120 different countries.

Your mission :

Intensive agriculture leads to soil degradation, yet agriculture will need to produce increasingly large amounts of food to meet the demand of a growing human population. High-intensity tillage can result in a decline in soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and increase in greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural soils. To avoid these negative effects, alternative tillage practices, such as no-till or reduced tillage are increasingly being promoted. However, previous studies report contrasting overall effects of tillage practices on SOC stock. To determine the protective and/or restorative effects of alternative tillage practices, it is therefore critical to identify the biogeochemical mechanisms that drive SOC dynamics under different tillage practices.

The goal of the project TilSoilC is to establish a link between tillage practices and mechanisms of SOC stabilization. We will study mechanisms of SOC stabilization across a spectrum of young to highly weathered soils in Africa and Europe (tropical (oxisols), Mediterranean (terra rossa, chromic luvisols), and cool-temperate (cambisols) soils). We hypothesize that tillage negatively affects SOC stocks and persistence through the breaking up of organo-mineral associations and aeration of oxygen-depleted zones in the soil. We further postulate that soil mineralogy is a major control on tillage-induced SOC losses, with soils dominated by low-activity clays being the most prone to SOC losses and soils dominated by oxides being the least prone to SOC losses. To test our hypotheses, we will sample top- and sub-soils from agricultural fields which have been subjected to different long-term tillage intensities and assess their physico-chemical properties, mineralogy, microbiology, and organic matter properties.

The project consortium consists of four partners at the University of Dschang in Cameroon, the University of Basilicata in Italy, Unil, and EPFL. The advertised position will be affiliated with the two Swiss institutions. The work will be carried out in the Soil Biogeochemistry Laboratory (

SOIL

) at EPFL and the

Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics (IDYST)

at UNIL; the postdoctoral researcher will be advised by Prof. Meret Aeppli (EPFL) and Dr. Stéphanie Grand (UNIL).

Remark :
Only candidates who applied through EPFL website or our partner Jobup’s website will be considered. Files sent by agencies without a mandate will not be taken into account.