PhD Funded Studentship in “Estimating flood frequency in the Trent and Yorkshire Ouse rivers using documentary and floodplain sedimentary archives to extend flood series.”

Applications are invited for a fully funded PhD studentship in Estimating flood frequency in the Trent and Yorkshire Ouse rivers using documentary and floodplain sedimentary archives to extend flood series. We are seeking outstanding, highly motivated postgraduate students to undertake a doctoral study in the Lincoln Centre for Water and Planetary Health (School of Geography) at the University of Lincoln.

In the first decades of the 21st century many parts of the UK have been affected by severe flooding. A number of these events have exceeded the highest gauged flows but generally instrumented records extend back only to the 1950s making it difficult to establish whether recent floods are unprecedented or if larger events have occurred in the past. Documentary and sedimentary records of large floods have been shown to be important means of extending flood series back several hundred and in some instances more than a thousand years.

This project will aim to assess the extent to which estimates of flood frequency and their uncertainty can be improved by reconstructing an event based record of Holocene and historical floods for the Trent and Yorkshire Ouse rivers from the analysis of gauged, documentary and sedimentary records. Investigations will focus on the middle Trent Valley around Nottingham and in the lower Yorkshire Ouse at York where communities and infrastructure are significantly at risk from flooding. Data collection will include the analysis of gauged flow series, documentary records of floods and palaeoflood evidence in sediment cores from the Trent and Yorkshire Ouse floodplains.

The regional geoarchaeological record will also be examined through the analysis of grey literature produced by regional archaeological organisations and other published sources. Significant non-stationarities in flood records and their causes will be identified, and the effects of changes in channel cross section and floodplain elevation on reconstructed flood flows evaluated. The extended flood series will be used to estimate flood frequency relationships, and the outcome compared with the results and uncertainty of hydrological methods based solely on gauged records. The results of this study will be used to improve long-term flood risk management by reducing uncertainty in flood frequency estimation and will employ novel visualisation techniques to map past, present and future flood risk.

The PhD student will be based at the School of Geography and the Lincoln Centre for Water and Planetary Health at the University at Lincoln supervised by Professor Mark G. Macklin. S/he will work closely with flood risk assessment and management practitioners Dr Sean Longfield (Environment Agency), Duncan Faulkner (JBA Consulting) and Dr Andy Howard (Landscape Research and Management) and Dr David Knight (Trent and Peak Archaeology).

Information about LCWPH and the School of Geography can be found at the following links:

http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/home/geography/research/
http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/home/geography/

Start date 1st September 2017
Duration: 36 months
Reference: COS-SOG-2017-2
www.lincoln.ac.uk/studentships

Entry requirements
Applicants should have a first or higher upper second-class honours degree, and preferably a relevant Master’s degree (or equivalent experience) in Physical Geography, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, and/or Life Sciences with substantial experience of qualitative research, excellent report-writing and English language communication skills and ability to work to deadlines.

How to apply
Applications must comprise: 1-page covering letter, 2-page research proposal, 2-page CV, and be e-mailed to Mrs Fiona Burstow: [Email Address Removed]. Closing Date: 31 March 2017. Interviews are due to be held in May 2017.

Informal enquiries may be made to Professor Mark Macklin: [Email Address Removed]