Postdoc in Plant Diversity Spatial Modelling

Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL

The Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL is part of the ETH Domain. Approximately 600 people work on the sustainable use and protection of the environment and on the handling of natural hazards.

In the framework of Biodiversa+ project the Research Unit of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology is looking from
**April 2023** or by agreement, for the duration of
**2-3 years**, for a

PostDoc in Plant Diversity Spatial Modelling 80-100% (f/m/d)

You will work in the international project (G4B) which aims to explore plant diversity and its drivers over the Alps and Carpathians. Specifically, the project aims to identify drivers of local and regional grassland biodiversity by evaluating location-specific information about diversity-supporting grassland management regimes, their legacies, interactions, drivers and constraints. For this purpose, the project team will interact with stakeholders including farmers and obtain ground-truth samples describing plant diversity and grassland management regimes and multitemporal earth observation (EO) data (satellite and aerial imagery, maps, climate, soils, terrain). This information will be further used together to predict the grassland diversity and management regimes over the whole mountain ranges.

You will use the existing plant diversity and grassland management information to model and predict the plant diversity over space (Alps and Carpathians) and time (present and past). You will collaborate with international and interdisciplinary teams, streamline the data unification and synthesis. Within the first year of the project, you will be able to collaborate with the project teams working on similar projects at the WSL Biodiversity Center. You will publish the results in international scientific journals and present them at dedicated conferences.

You have a PhD in Environmental Sciences, Biology or equivalent and you understand the concepts of spatial science, plant diversity modelling, environmental modelling and remote sensing. You are passionate about science and analytical work and have strong interpretation skills. You are skilled in R, Python and spatial modelling. Knowledge of socio-economic research methods (interacting with stakeholders and analysing management data) is an asset. You have a good knowledge of English (knowledge of German or other European languages is an advantage). You are very ambitious and motivated, are used to a high standard of independent, structured and careful working attitude, and demonstrate a high level of team spirit.
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