Carbon and nitrogen dynamics in oil palm agro-ecosystems

Oil palm is the largest agricultural crop in the tropics, currently accounting for over 13% of all tropical land area. Over 87% of current oil palm production is in Malaysia and Indonesia, though cultivation of this crop is rapidly expanding into other parts of Asia, Latin America and Africa. Conversion of tropical forests to oil palm are implicated in widespread biodiversity loss and enhanced terrestrial carbon losses. Despite the acknowledged importance of oil palm ecosystems for regional and global biogeochemical processes, our process understanding of the factors which regulate greenhouse gas fluxes in these environments is still poor, impairing our ability to model and predict the effects of environmental forcing or management on greenhouse gas exchange. The objective of this PhD project is to improve our process understanding of carbon and/or nitrogen cycling in oil palm plantations on peat, with the long-term objective of developing more sustainable management practices. The successful applicant will have broad latitude to design and implement an exciting, independent research project addressing key knowledge gaps in oil palm biogeochemistry, under the guidance of an interdisciplinary team consisting of investigators from Aberdeen, St Andrews and the Malaysian Palm Oil Board. Fieldwork will be conducted in Sarawak, Malaysia.