Postdoc Landscape Ecology for Digital Twins

Postdoc Landscape Ecology for Digital Twins

UvA - University of Amsterdam

Amsterdam, Netherlands

What are you going to do?

You will support the integration of diverse geospatial and environmental data within a Digital Twin virtual research environment at a landscape scale, and the combination with biodiversity data for ecological analysis and modelling in terrestrial ecosystems. In this context, you will customize, analyse and aggregate diverse geospatial datasets from remote sensing or modelled environmental data, such as satellite and airborne remote sensing products, climate and land cover maps, habitat information, nitrogen and pesticide deposition, aerial photographs, meteorological and air quality data, and human infrastructures. To make the geospatial and environmental data relevant for ecological analysis and modelling, the environmental annotation of biodiversity data (e.g. inventories, species occurrences, digital sensor observations) is required to specify the spatial and temporal resolution and buffering of environmental conditions. You will be involved in the work package of the LTER-LIFE project that is dedicated to integrating data and making them FAIR for modelling and Digital Twinning virtual research environment. You will interact with project partners that develop and manage the scientific use cases in the De Hoge Veluwe National Park, an ecosystem consisting of heathlands, sand dunes, and woodlands. You will also interact with other work packages that design the infrastructure services, develop the models and computer codes, and organise capacity building and training for ecologists and environmental scientists.

Tasks and responsibilities:

Accessing, handling, customizing, and processing diverse geospatial datasets;

Testing, applying, and prototyping environmental annotation tools for biodiversity data;

Conducting scientific analyses that integrate environmental data with biodiversity observations;

Working with ecologists, stakeholders, database managers, data scientists and software engineers to integrate biodiversity and environmental data;

Contributing to building an inventory of relevant biotic and abiotic datasets and collecting relevant metadata;

Working together with computer scientists, eScience engineers and stakeholders to establish digital connections to various external data platforms and repositories;

Writing publications in peer-reviewed journals to present analytical results or developed tools;

Engaging in training courses for data handling, processing, and visualisation.

What do you have to offer?

Your experience and profile:

PhD in landscape ecology, ecological informatics, geoscience, environmental science or a closely related field;

Interest, passion and experience with biodiversity and environmental data at a landscape scale;

Exceptional quantitative skills and profound experience in scripting/programming (e.g. R, Python) and handling of diverse datasets;

Willingness to work in a multidisciplinary team (ecology, computer science; software engineering, remote sensing, environmental management);

Proficiency in scientific writing;

Ability to speak and communicate in English at an academic level.