Funded PhD Studentship: DTC GEO 28 - Assessing processes of forest degradation in British forest landscapes and their contribution to carbon dynamics

Swansea University is a UK top 30 institution for research excellence (Research Excellence Framework 2014), and has been named Welsh University of the Year 2017 by The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide.

Swansea Science DTC is a community committed to undertaking world-class research that has a positive impact globally and we have a fully-funded PhD scholarship for 2017/2018 entry.

We are recognised as one of the foremost global centres for teaching and research in human and physical geography. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) Geography at Swansea was ranked joint 9th in the UK for research impact and 11th in the UK for research environment. Our research environment (how the Department supports research staff and students) and the impact of our research (its value to society) were both judged to be 100% world leading or internationally excellent.

Our internationally active research staff and large community of postgraduate researchers create a dynamic and inspirational environment in which to study. You will also benefit from our exceptional facilities, including: a powerful workstation for all Earth Observation postgraduates; ‘Blue Ice 2’ supercomputer, containing 600 cores and 1.2TB memory distributed over 50 nodes with 33TB data storage, used mainly for climate and glaciological modelling; specialist laboratory suites for stable isotope ratio analysis; tree ring analysis; extraction and identification of organic compounds; pollen extraction and analysis; rainfall simulation; tephra analysis; soil and sediment characterisation.

Description of Project:

Projected future climate scenarios threaten the sustainability of our forest resources, affecting productivity and carbon sequestration as current species find themselves beyond their tolerance range, and enabling the invasion of pests and diseases which would not previously have survived.

Advanced multi-sensor, time-series remote sensing analysis permits the spatial and temporal assessment of trends of forest condition, facilitating the detection of forest degradation processes which are associated with a decline in productivity and the quality of our woodland landscapes.

This PhD project provides an opportunity for an exceptional candidate to work with partners at Forest Research to explore and develop advanced remote sensing approaches to assess the effects of degraded forest landscapes on carbon sequestration.