PhD Student

TROPICAL FOREST GLOBAL CHANGE
PhD STUDENT VACANCY

The Isotope Bioscience Laboratory (ISOFYS) within the Department of Green Chemistry and Technology of Ghent University (UGENT, Belgium) is recruiting a new PhD student (M/F/X). The PhD student will be engaged in the recently started Methusalem project COBBOF: ‘Congo Basin Forest Biogeochemistry Observatory (COBBOF): Relieving pressure on social-ecological systems in the Congo basin’ funded by the special research fund (BOF) of Ghent University. The research will be conducted in collaboration with INERA (Institut National pour l’Etude et de la Recherche Agronomique) in Yangambi and Université de Kisangani and Bukavu in DR Congo.

CONTEXT
Tropical forests are important for the global carbon and water cycle as well as for biodiversity conservation. The Congo basin is the second largest continuous area of tropical forest. In 2011 we wrote in Nature: “Include the Congo basin in forest studies” (Verbeeck et al., 2011). No sooner said than done, during the last 15 years we established unique research infrastructure and strong network answering pressing socio-ecological questions for the Congo basin. This Methusalem initiative aims to consolidate established research infrastructure and research. This will allow us to enforce our reference position for tropical forest biogeochemistry in the Congo basin and continue to lead an established local and international scientific network.
A recent meta-analysis on carbon accrual in intact African tropical forests showed a stable carbon sink of ca. 0.7 tons C per ha per year over a 30-years period until 2015 (Hubau et al., 2020). This is in contrast with the declining carbon sink in the Amazon. Indeed, we delivered studies showing that intact Congo basin forests are different from tropical forests in the Amazon and South-East Asia in terms of forest structure and composition and are also subjected to enhanced atmospheric nutrient inputs from biomass burning. Hence, we urgently need a better mechanistic understanding of biosphere-atmosphere exchange of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (N2O and CH4). For this purpose, ISOFYS has built the first eddy-covariance flux tower in the Congo basin, which is operational since October 2020. Via additional Methusalem funding, the flux tower site can also be equipped with automated soil chambers to measure direct soil emission of CO2, N2O and CH4, as well as infrastructure to measure lateral losses of carbon via streams. Doing so we operate in a unique “supersite” for sustained and long-term climate change mitigation monitoring of an intact tropical forest in the Congo basin.

JOB CONTENT
The PhD student will directly contribute to field- and process-based soil greenhouse gas fluxes from various forest types in the Congo basin. This will be done through a combination of experimental research, field work, statistical processing of the data. This PhD will “team up” with an ongoing PhD student that focusses on CO2 fluxes, net ecosystem productivity and lateral carbon losses. The eddy covariance tower in Yangambi, DR Congo will also be equipped with a fast response laser to measure N2O and CH4 biosphere-atmosphere exchange. In addition, the site will be equipped with automated soil chambers to measure direct soil N2O and CH4 exchange. As such, this site is one of the best equipped tropical forest sites worldwide to understand greenhouse emission and uptake from tropical forests. As PhD student you will be responsible to test and start working with both systems to produce and explain diurnal and seasonal variations of N2O and CH4 fluxes. This data will be underpinned by high-quality climate data and biogeochemical parameters and processes using, among others, in situ 15N pulse chase tracing, N2O isotopomers, etc. Although most of the measuring systems run automatically and local technical staff is supporting this research, several and medium-term field campaigns to DR Congo will be required. The scientific data will be published in scientific journals, but also disseminated to various local stakeholders.

WE OFFER

• A full-time 4-year position as a PhD-student at UGENT (start autumn 2021)
• A dynamic, challenging, and stimulating research environment
• Free public commuting and/or bike fee

PROFILE

• Master degree in Sciences, Bio-science Engineering or equivalent
• Strong interest in multidisciplinary research in relation to tropical forests and climate change
• Open and collaborative attitude
• Prepared to take initiative, but also to work in close collaboration with other team members and international partners
• To prepare and participate in medium-term sampling campaigns in DR Congo
• Prepared to take up part of the site management in DR Congo
• Prepared to participate in (inter)national conferences and symposia

SKILLS

• Excellent organization, communication (both oral and written) and social skills
• Capable of developing, planning and organizing your own research work and meeting deadlines imposed by the project
• Strong interest in experimental field work in tropical African forests
• Good insights in analyzing and interpreting data
• Knowledge of statistical processing of data, whereby a good knowledge of R is an asset
• Excellent knowledge of English (written and spoken) and good knowledge of French (spoken)

Only applications that meet the profile and that are received in time will be taken into consideration.

CONTACT DETAILS
If interested, please send your motivation letter, CV (including references) and a copy of your MSc diploma, with reference “COBBOF-GHG-PhD” before September 15, 2021 to Prof. Pascal Boeckx [email protected] and Saskia Van der Looven ([email protected] ).

For more information:
Prof. Pascal Boeckx (+32 9 264 60 00), project PI
Isotope Bioscience Laboratory: www.ISOFYS.be
Only applications that meet the profile and that are received in time will be taken into consideration.