PhD Scholarship on carbon dynamics in newly created coastal wetlands

The Faculty of Sciences and Bioengineering Sciences, Department Biology, is looking for a PhD-student with a doctoral grant. 

More concretely, for the preparation of a doctorate, we are looking for an enthusiastic and highly motivated PhD-candidate with a strong interest in tidal wetlands and remote sensing. The position will be hosted within the group of Prof. Dr. Tom Van der Stocken, in close collaboration with research groups at UAntwerpen (Prof. Dr. Stijn Temmerman and Prof. Dr. Ivan Janssens) and KULeuven (Prof. Dr. Christian Schwarz and Prof. Dr. Steven Bouillon).

Tidal wetlands serve as a natural buffer zone, protecting human communities from storm surges and sea-level rise, and are considered effective Nature-based Solution (NBS) to both climate change adaptation and mitigation by sequestering carbon. NBS projects aimed at developing tidal marshes and mangroves are generally implemented on landscape scales spanning several square kilometres. While techniques exist to measure carbon sequestration at specific points within tidal wetlands, these methods are insufficient for upscaling carbon balances to the typical scale and duration of NBS projects. The VLAIO-funded WETCOAST project will address this gap by developing and validating an innovative triple-technique approach. This approach combines drone-based, air- and water-flux-based, and advanced carbon characterization techniques to accurately quantify carbon sequestration and sediment stabilization functionality at the landscape scale.

These innovations will be developed in two living labs of large-scale NBS projects, representing the two climate-dependent types of tidal wetlands on our planet: (1) temperate-climate tidal marshes are developed over 465 ha in the Scheldt estuary (Hedwige-Prosperpolder project, Belgium & the Netherlands) and (2) ca. 50 ha of new tropical mangroves will be developed in the Guayas estuary (AquaForest project, Ecuador).

You will be a member of the VLAIO-funded WETCOAST Project and focus on drone image acquisition, processing, and analysis for landscape-scale quantification of carbon sequestration and sediment stabilization along ecosystem age gradients. More specifically, images will be obtained from multiple drone surveys for 4 marsh sites and 4 mangrove sites and be processed to generate maps of (1) sediment elevation change, (2) above-ground biomass, below-ground biomass, biomass organic carbon content, density, and sequestration rate, and (3) sediment organic carbon content, density, and sequestration rate. The obtained maps will then be analysed to identify spatial patterns and temporal rates in the development of erosion protection and carbon sequestration, over time scales from very recently created NBS projects, to ca. 10, 20 and >30 years old marsh and mangrove systems.

For this function, our Brussels Humanities, Sciences & Engineering Campus (Elsene) will serve as your home base.