2 PhD positions are available at University of Auckland's Institute of Marine Science
Coastal ecosystem services and the functional performance of ecosystems: A PhD research project is available working on ecosystem services in coastal marine habitats. Coastal marine ecosystems support many services: habitat formation, sediment stabilisation, improving water clarity, storing carbon and processing nutrients. The research will focus on ecosystem functions that underpin critical services and seek to develop models of how the performance of specific ecosystem functions scales to changes in ecological and environmental conditions. Based on a conceptual analysis of selected ecosystem function performance curves, it is anticipated that field studies will be designed to assess the efficacy of these models. This project will be under the supervision of Prof Simon Thrush & Dr Teri OMeara, Institute of Marine Science, The University of Auckland, New Zealand. Work for the project may involve being based either at the Universitys city campus or at Leigh Marine Laboratory. To secure funding candidates will need to apply for a University of Auckland Scholarship. See: www.science.auckland.ac.nz/phd ; www.auckland.ac.nz/applynow ; www.postgraduate.ac.nz ; www.international.auckland.ac.nz ; www.scholarships.auckland.ac.nz Cumulative impacts and the resilience of coastal ecosystems: A PhD research project is available working on the potential for thresholds in estuarine and coastal soft-sediment ecosystems. These rapid changes in the structure or function of ecological systems are often called regime shifts. The research will initially consider different approaches to detecting break points in ecological data and developing a mechanistic framework that can go on to be used to support field studies to assess the risk of cumulative impacts in inducing threshold changes in key ecosystem processes and interactions. This project will be under the supervision of Prof Simon Thrush, Institute of Marine Science, The University of Auckland, New Zealand. Work for the project may involve being based either at the Universitys city campus or at Leigh Marine Laboratory. To secure funding candidates will need to apply for a University of Auckland Scholarship. See: www.science.auckland.ac.nz/phd ; www.auckland.ac.nz/applynow ; www.postgraduate.ac.nz ; www.international.auckland.ac.nz ; www.scholarships.auckland.ac.nz Please direct all inquiries to Prof. Simon Thrush ([email protected])
