Prof Stephen Willis, Dr S Street, Dr A Lehikoinen
No more applications being accepted
Competition Funded PhD Project (European/UK Students Only)
About the Project
Background: The Arctic environment is rapidly changing, with impacts on Arctic livelihoods associated with the natural world being poorly understood. Moreover, there are increasing calls to utilise natural climate solutions (such as avoiding deforestation and peatland rewetting) to limit global temperature to below 20C. Hence, changes in the Arctic (which contains large carbon and water stores) have the potential to affect both local and global livelihoods and biodiversity.
Aims and Objectives: The primary objective of this studentship is to (a) simulate how the recent and future climatic changes have affected, and will affect Arctic species of birds, fish and mammals. For migratory species, we will also explore whether recent population changes can be related to climatic change on breeding grounds, non-breeding areas or along migratory routes. We will simulate the changing abundance and distribution of all species in relation to climate and land-use changes. We will build a database on human use/trade of Arctic species and evaluate how such use could change in the future. We will separately (b) assess species adaptations to human modified environments. Finally, we will (c) define those Arctic habitats and species that provide wider ecosystem services (ES) (beyond direct human use) and explore how their provisioning might change in future.
Methodology: We will produce species distribution models to relate the occurrence of Arctic species to climatic conditions and habitat, and will use these models to simulate changes to species ranges. We will also simulate the changing non-breeding ranges of migratory species. We will explore the importance of such species in the culture and functioning of Arctic ecosystems. We will then evaluate how potential changes will alter human-animal interactions. We will use outputs from dynamic vegetation models, conditioned on future climate and human development scenarios, to explore how ES might change in the future. The student will visit an Arctic research institute to collate long-term bird monitoring data from across the Arctic. We will also have unprecedented access to a new Europe-wide datasets of bird distribution and abundances (www.ebba2.info), collected by thousands of volunteers over a 5-year period, which can be directly compared to a similar dataset collected 30 years ago. Using these, we will assess how Arctic species have fared under three decades of recent climate change, relative to species from elsewhere in Europe.
Intellectual and Practical Significance: This project will break new academic ground in several ways. It will provide a first detailed synthesis of the potential impacts of ongoing and future climatic change on a broad suite of species of importance to the people of the Arctic. It will take advantage of newly available data on projected future land use changes under climate change to provide detail on how both biodiversity and people will be affected by changes to the natural systems.
Funding Notes
Stipend of ~£14,700 p.a.
This project is in competition with others for funding. Success depends on the quality of applications received, relative to those for competing projects. If you are interested in applying, contact Prof Willis ([Email Address Removed]) asap, (by 10th Jan at the very latest), with a CV and covering letter. Applicants subsequently encouraged to apply should do so online via www.durham.ac.uk/postgraduate/apply attaching their CV, covering letter, 2 academic references, and evidence of previous academic qualifications. This funding scheme also requires additional information to be uploaded, which Prof Willis will advise upon. Further details are available at: https://www.dur.ac.uk/arctic/applying/ & https://tinyurl.com/y9x7eqel
References
• Griscom, B.W. et al. (2017) Natural climate solutions. PNAS, 114 (44), 11645-11650.
• Hof, C. et al. (2018) Bioenergy cropland may offset positive effects of climate change mitigation for global vertebrate diversity. PNAS, in press.
• Scridel, D. et al. (2018) A review and meta-analysis of the effects of climate change on Holarctic mountain and upland bird populations. Ibis, 160, 489-515.