About the Project
How do we balance development poverty alleviation with maintaining ecological connectivity for wildlife? International assistance brings much needed infrastructure to developing countries in the form of roads, power, water, energy extraction and agriculture, however there is an urgent need to evaluate whether infrastructure projects are exacerbating the fragmentation of landscapes on which wild animal populations and ecotourism activities rely. The primary objective of this PhD is to develop a framework for optimizing national and international strategies surrounding efforts to service poor communities while maintaining ecological connectivity in sub-Saharan Africa. Using a suite of new analytical tools, and existing datasets on animal movement for a variety of species (herbivores, carnivores, grazers, browsers, ruminants, equids, large and small) combined with high resolution satellite imagery and GIS layers, the project will generate predictions of animal movement and connectivity in different landscape contexts based how GPS-tracked animals use various features (e.g. rainfall and vegetation gradients, river networks, topographic relief). These predictions will be integrated with demographic data and will form the basis for species-specific, and landscape-specific, models of connectivity that can be used to simulate the spatial cost-consequence-outcome of different development strategies. Ultimately this empirical information will be used to parameterize simulations that will inform managers and international policy advisors about the cost-consequence-outcome of alternative infrastructure development scenarios.
Position and Work Environment
This PhD program is funded by an award to the University of Glasgow and the UN Environments World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) through NERC’s Industrial CASE Studentship program. The student will join a diverse and productive multi-disciplinary research body at Glasgow’s Institute of Biodiversity Animal Health and Comparative Medicine (IBAHCM), home to leading experts on spatial statistical techniques and quantitative analysis of animal movement particularly in sub-Sahara Africa. Specifically, the student will have unique access to researchers and resources at the Boyd Orr Centre for Population and Ecosystem Health (UGlasgow) as well as applied research scientists at UNEP-WCMC. The team at UNEP-WCMC contains a large and diverse group of people working at the policy-science interface, including post-graduate students, PhD-holding scientists, and international legal and policy experts. The student will spend time at the UNEP-WCMC in Cambridge during which they will have the unique opportunity to interact with a diversity of applied conservation approaches within a strong policy setting, which will provide a range of valuable skills that will significantly improve employment opportunities outside of academia. In particular, the student will link to the UNEP-WCMC led consortium funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund that works on building capacity to ensure the sustainable development in Tanzania and Kenya.
The student’s work will help identify issues such as priority habitats at a transboundary level, conservation off-set areas, locations for ecological restoration (reinitiating migratory corridors), site planning for development, or testing seasonal restrictions on activity. This will help the international development community meet the sustainable development goals, and opens an excellent route for knowledge transfer from science to applied management.
PLEASE NOTE: You should attach a letter of intent in addition to your CV in the application support documents (there is no need for a proposal) and when applying, please enter the project title in the programme description box of the application form.
Start date: 17 September 2018.
Continue with Facebook
