PhD Position on the Coupled Soil Carbon-Nitrogen-Phosphorus Cycles

The Department of Earth Sciences is looking for a highly motivated PhD candidate with an MSc background in Earth, Environmental or Agriculture Sciences or other appropriate fields. You will work on the project "The coupled soil carbon-nitrogen-phosphorus cycles and their response to human activities and climate change".

Your job

Soils are the largest terrestrial reservoirs of carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P), playing a crucial role in global biogeochemical cycles. The soil cycles of C, N, and P interact dynamically with each other, but some of their individual pathways also differ. Spatial heterogeneity and temporal changes in climate, hydrological cycle, atmospheric chemical components, soil physiochemical properties, vegetations, and human activities (e.g., land-use change, agriculture, urbanization) collectively lead to changes in soil C-N-P cycling.

In this four-year study, you will develop a state-of-art global spatially explicit, integrated, mechanistic, coupled soil biogeochemistry model for the dynamic interconnected C-N-P cycling. This model will build on our pioneering model framework Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment-Dynamic Global Nutrient Model (IMAGE-DGNM), which tracks the changes in climate, hydrological cycle, land cover, and human activities since the pre-industrial era. You will collect and synthesise the latest field and remote-sensing-based observation databases and reported coupled kinetics from labs and culture experiments, and use them to construct and validate the model. On this basis, we will quantify the spatiotemporal changes in global soil coupled C-N-P cycling from the pre-industrial era till the present and assess the influences of climate change and a variety of human activities. Questions regarding the interdependencies among C, N and P will be the research focus, such as how nutrient imbalance regulates/disrupts global soil C sequestration and how CO2 fertilisation influences N and P storage in soils and loss to waters and the atmosphere. We will further run the model to project their future changes under different scenarios. We invite you to share your ideas and suggestions for this innovative project in your application letter.

A personalised training programme will be set up, reflecting your training needs and career objectives. About 20% of your time will be dedicated to this training component, which includes following courses/workshops as well as training on the job in assisting in the Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes of the department at Utrecht University.

Your qualities

You are a motivated team player, have experience in modelling using programming language(s), and have completed your MSc degree in Earth Sciences, Environmental Science, Agricultural Science or a related discipline by the time the position starts. Furthermore, you have:

• strong and demonstrable skills in running transport, cycling or budget models or Earth System Model(s) (shown by a relevant master research project experience or course study);
• a theoretical background and an interest in coupled soil C-N-P cycling, biogeochemistry, integrated assessment, human perturbations, climate change, and sustainability issues (shown by a relevant master research project experience or courses);
• strong analytical skills;
• willingness to experiment with new data collection and model methodology development;
• motivation to cooperate in a diverse and multidisciplinary research team;
• excellent communication skills;
• being fluent in the use of Python or a similar programming language is essential.

Due to the international character of our research, good command of spoken and written English is essential. We highly encourage applicants from all members of our community and of diverse backgrounds to join us.

Our offer

• A position for one year, with an extension to a total of four years upon a successful assessment in the first year, and with the specific intent that it results in a doctorate within this period;
• a working week of 38 hours and a gross monthly salary between €2,901 and €3,707 (salary scale P under the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities (CAO NU));
• 8% holiday pay and 8.3% year-end bonus;
• a pension scheme, partially paid parental leave and flexible terms of employment based on the CAO NU.