Recognizing and Protecting the Aquatic-Terrestrial Biodiversity of Dynamic River Ecosystems

Temporary rivers, including England’s iconic chalk streams, experience natural transitions between lotic, lentic, and terrestrial conditions, with this instream habitat diversity supporting high biodiversity and broad ecosystem service provision. Despite a recent and ongoing increase in international research exploring temporary rivers, our understanding of how their ecological communities respond to environmental change remains limited. In addition, the dynamic nature of temporary rivers also poses a unique and pressing challenge for the effective assessment and enhancement of their ecological quality. This PhD represents an exciting opportunity to collaborate with leading researchers from academia and industry to address this challenge and to contribute to the rapidly expanding discipline of temporary river ecology. The project will contribute to national, EU-wide and global research seeking to improve characterization of temporary rivers and their biodiversity, and will inform wider initiatives to enhance their ecological quality.

The natural variability and consequent high biodiversity of temporary rivers is threatened by anthropogenic pressures. Water abstraction, physical habitat modification, and land use change have all altered ecosystem quality, but how instream communities respond to these interacting impacts remains poorly characterized. In particular, over-abstraction affects England’s chalk streams, with habitat modification exacerbating the ecological impacts of flow reductions. To address these threats, this project will examine temporary chalk stream community responses to anthropogenic stressors and natural intermittence, to inform development of biomonitoring programmes that characterize ecological quality and thus underpin management actions designed to enhance quality.

The PhD researcher will work with industry partners including the Environment Agency to develop an extensive field work programme that characterizes communities across temporary chalk streams of contrasting ecological quality. Aquatic and terrestrial biotas will be surveyed and sampled, to characterize spatiotemporal variability in community composition in relation to interacting natural and anthropogenic environmental drivers. This aquatic-terrestrial focus is globally innovative and will balance existing wet-phase research by also recognizing dry-phase communities. The data collected will be analysed to evaluate the ability of different communities to act as indicators of ecological quality, and it is expected that novel bioindicators will be identified. The results of field campaigns will also inform the development of a biomonitoring programme to assess the ecological quality of temporary chalk streams across wet and dry phases. Public engagement can underpin the success of initiatives designed to enhance ecosystem quality, and the project will therefore seek to engage citizen scientists in the long-term operation of this biomonitoring programme.

Project findings will contribute to the ongoing, international increase in temporary river research. Developing effective biomonitoring approaches for these dynamic ecosystems is a current national, EU-wide and international research priority. Outputs of this research are thus likely to have considerable academic and wider impact, and have high potential to inform biomonitoring programmes implemented in temporary rivers across and beyond the UK and Europe.

The PhD researcher’s skills profile will be enhanced by an extensive 3-year doctoral training programme encompassing discipline-specific and generic scientific skills. Specifically, you will be supported in developing a professional skills profile that encompasses proficiency in field and laboratory environments, advanced approaches to analyse complex ecological data, and scientific writing and publication. Funding is available to support your attendance of national meetings and international conferences, providing opportunities to disseminate project results and build a network of colleagues that supports your post-doctoral career development. As a member of the College of Science and Technology, you will belong to an active and diverse research community that spans our Schools of Science and Technology and of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences. Environment Agency co-supervision of the project will ensure your developing professional network encompasses both industry and academic scientists.

Dr Rachel Stubbington

Mr Tim Sykes

Professor Rob Mortimer

Entrants must have a first/undergraduate Honours degree, with an Upper Second Class or a First Class grade, in [subjects]. Entrants with a Lower Second Class grade at first degree must also have a postgraduate Masters Degree at Merit or Commendation.

The studentship includes full-time PhD fees and bursary for a UK or EU student for three years and is funded by Nottingham Trent University and the People’s Trust for Endangered Species. Supervision will be led by Dr. Richard Yarnell, School of Animal Rural and Environmental Sciences (NTU Brackenhurst Campus), in conjunction with Dr Phil Baker (University of Reading), Dr Sarah Perkins (University of Cardiff) and Dr Silviu Petrovan (University of Cambridge).