PhD: Worldwide Forest Carbon Uptake Under Climate Change and Disturbance

Are you excited to unravel the rapid changes in the carbon balance in forests worldwide? Would the idea of using a supercomputer make you smile? Are you a team-player who gets things done? As PhD candidate “Worldwide Forest Carbon Uptake” you will combine atmospheric observations, Earth Observation products and numerical models to quantify how the global carbon sink in forests is changing at a time where society urgently relies on this sink to remove CO₂ from the air.

The ongoing changes are driven by forest management, biodiversity loss, fire, pests, and climate change. The carbon cycle impacts differ from one continent to the next, and one of the challenges is to quantify both direct and delayed impacts on time scales of decades to days using a wide variety of datasets. This includes atmospheric CO₂ observations from high-precision monitoring networks such as ICOS, but also Earth Observation (EO) data that gauge changes in forest biomass, or forest age structure, or ongoing disturbances such as fires. As PhD candidate you will integrate these into an existing prototype numerical modelling framework and add new data assimilation capacity for these large EO datasets where needed. The project aims to expand this capacity from the current European domain to the rest of the world.

You will have access to national and institutional high-performance computing facilities to develop and run large-scale carbon cycle simulations, and to analyse the resulting datasets. With these integrated forest carbon balances you will address questions like: How has forest carbon uptake changed globally over the past decades? Can atmospheric observations detect signatures of forest management and disturbance? Which Earth Observation products most improve regional carbon balance estimates? Ultimately, the outcomes of your work will be compared to national accounting methods for land-use and land-use change that inform countries’ efforts to enhance carbon storage in forests.

This position is part of EUFOR-G3W, a Horizon Europe project contributing to the WMO Global Greenhouse Gas Watch (G3W). EUFOR-G3W develops observation- and model-based products to quantify greenhouse-gas sources and sinks at global to national scales. You will have access to national and institutional high-performance computing facilities to run and develop large-scale carbon cycle simulations.

Your duties and responsibilities include:

• To apply and enhance our prototype forest carbon balance numerical model to use more EO data and the more advanced data assimilation methods they require
• To operate within the EUFOR-G3W project team and uphold collaboration and communication with (inter)national partners
• To support the broader carbon cycle team in the development and publication of science with our 'CarbonTracker' family of greenhouse gas models and data products
• To support science of our BSc/MSc students through co-supervision, mentoring, problem-solving, and technical training

You will work here
The Meteorology and Air Quality (MAQ) Group at Wageningen University aims to advance understanding of atmospheric processes and their interactions with the Earth’s surface to address scientific and societal challenges. The group focuses on six themes, all related to weather, climate, and atmospheric composition.

Research in the carbon cycle theme focuses on exchange of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases between land, ocean and the atmosphere on regional to global scales. You will work directly with the carbon cycle research team at Wageningen University led by Prof. Wouter Peters, Prof. Guido van der Werf, and dr. Ingrid Luijkx. Together with multiple postdocs and PhD students, we investigate greenhouse gas exchange worldwide, with a focus on the exchange of CO₂ through the well-known CarbonTracker data assimilation we maintain and develop. Atmosphere, biosphere, and fire modeling and observations are our core activities, often using data assimilation techniques to combine data streams.

Our group offers an open, social, diverse, collaborative, and stimulating environment that thrives on teamwork, while helping individuals grow in their scientific career.

You will work at the interface of atmospheric science, Earth Observation, ecosystem science and climate policy, contributing to one of Europe's flagship efforts to monitor greenhouse-gas sources and sinks. Close collaboration is foreseen with a 2nd PhD candidate working under Simon Besnard at the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany. While GFZ focuses on translating Earth Observation data into forest carbon information, the WUR candidate focuses on integrated forest carbon balances using (atmospheric) modelling and data assimilation. The position thus offers direct collaboration with leading research groups in Wageningen and Potsdam, access to state-of-the-art modelling systems and observations, and opportunities to present your work internationally.