Two Ph.D. graduate assistantships are available for keen and motivated students interested in research and training centered around understanding the impact of climate change on boreal forest carbon reservoirs. These graduate students will be part of a NSERC Strategic Project research team made up of foreign collaborators (Drs. Ronald Benner at the University of South Carolina, Sharon Billings at the University of Kansas, and Martin Moroni at Forestry Tasmania in Australia), provincial and Canadian Forest Service partners (Dr Kate Edwards-Atlantic Forestry Center). This project is focused on exploiting the newly established Newfoundland and Labrador Boreal Ecosystem Latitudinal Transect (NL-BELT) with five sites located in western Newfoundland and southern Labrador. The project aims to determine to what extent increased microbial transformations of soil organic matter (SOM) and losses of relatively recalcitrant pools of SOM may occur with warming along a boreal forest transect. To isolate the potential impact of warming while maintaining an ability to apply the results to intact boreal forests, investigations of soils and the dissolved organic matter they produce will be conducted along the NL-BELT and combined with manipulative warming experiments to develop biogeochemical indicators of soil responses to increasing temperature. It is anticipated that one student will focus on the investigation of molecular and isotopic signatures of boreal stream DOM and its sources, developing indicators of variation in SOM dynamics with climate within small headwater catchments. A second student will focus on the alteration of chemical and isotopic composition of plant and microbial biomarkers in order to assess the microbial mechanisms associated with variation in SOM pools with warming and across this boresl forest latitudinal gradient. Experience with soil microbial ecology,biogeochemistry and/or organic geochemistry particularly at the M.Sc. level will be important. These assistantships will be available as early as March 2011 through the Department of Earth Sciences or the Ph.D. program in Environmental Sciences at Memorial University. Memorial is the largest university in Atlantic Canada. As the provinces only university, Memorial plays an integral role in the educational life of Newfoundland and Labrador (http://www.newfoundlandlabrador.com). Offering a diverse set of undergraduate and graduate programs for almost 18,000 students, Memorial provides a distinctive and stimulating environment for learning in St. Johns (http://www.stjohns.ca/index.jsp), a very safe, friendly city with great historical charm, a vibrant cultural life, and easy access to a wide range of outdoor activities. Please direct inquires or send applications, including letter of interest and detailed curriculum vitae (including contact information for 3 references), to: Dr. Susan Ziegler Department of Earth Sciences Memorial University St. Johns, NL A1B 3X5 Canada
