Natural Capital Project: Postdoctoral Researcher
The Natural Capital Project (NatCap) is hiring a postdoc with remote sensing expertise at the University of Minnesota. This postdoc will support a series of three workshops that will bring together the earth observation and ecosystem services communities. The postdoc will provide critical intellectual input to identify linkages between Earth observation (EO) products and ecosystem service models, develop proof-of-concept products for more easily attainable integration, and facilitate collaboration and grant development for cutting-edge projects. NatCap is a partnership between Stanford University and the University of Minnesota, The Nature Conservancy, and the World Wildlife Fund that aims to shine a light on the intimate connections between people and nature, and to reveal, test, and scale ways of securing the well-being of both.
This is a one-year position. There is the possibility for an extension of the position to execute a related project focused on grassland productivity in Mongolia.
The ideal candidate has extensive experience using EO data and is well-versed in the extent of data products as well as about their limitations. The candidate must be interested in developing users for EO data and in the theoretical as well as practical challenges that non-experts face in integrating EO for applications. Interest in ecosystem services is critical; experience with specific ecosystem service assessment is beneficial not but required.
The primary role of this position will be to produce two peer-reviewed papers. One will focus on concrete examples of how EO products could be used in existing ES valuation tools, providing examples and demonstrating varying levels of difficulty of this integration. A second will be more theoretical, laying out the different ways that EO could be used in ES valuation and providing a framework for development of novel ES valuation approaches designed with EO as an integral part. Both of these papers will provide guidelines to the wider community on how best to go about integrating EO into ES valuation.
This postdoc will also provide meeting support, including working directly with potential participants in both the remote sensing community and the ecosystem services community. This provides an excellent opportunity to expand your network, but it does require talking to people and organizational skills.
More information and application instructions online at the University of Minnesota's employment website, Job ID 317390.
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