[Aqualist] PhD opportunity

[Kat Fitzsimmons]

Dear Quaternarists,

Please circulate/re-post this PhD opportunity! Kat Fitzsimmons is seeking a
#PhD student to investigate desert margin landscapes in the School of
Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Monash University @MonashEAE,
@Monash_Science in Melbourne, Australia.

#phdlife #drylands #dunes #landuse



Please contact kathryn.fitzsimmons at monash.edu by the end of June. Include a
1-page letter outlining your main interests and reasons for pursuing a PhD,
and your CV with relevant academic grades and publications.



---



*PhD opportunity for international candidates in drylands research at
Monash University*



Monash University is advertising a PhD project investigating the response
of desert-margin sand dunes to climatic and land-use change, to work with
A/Prof Kat Fitzsimmons and Manu Hinojosa within the School of Earth,
Atmosphere and the Environment in Melbourne, Australia. Monash ranks in the
top 50 universities globally, and Melbourne is one of the world’s most
liveable cities.



Please see below for more information on the project. Candidates should
address enquiries to Kathryn.fitzsimmons at monash.edu; please make contact
before applying. Please include in the email a 1-page letter of motivation,
outlining your primary area of interest and reason for pursuing a PhD in
this field, and your CV including your academic transcripts.


Funding including stipend, fees and project costs is available on a
competitive basis to all international candidates. There is no deadline to
apply; the position will remain open until the ideal candidate is found.



The details:



Australia is the driest inhabited continent, and represents a region
vulnerable to future aridification. Climate models predict that Australia
will become drier overall; future droughts will become longer and more
intense. On the Earth’s surface, a critical part of the process of
aridification involves the reactivation of ancient desert landforms, such
as sand dunes, preserved on present-day dryland margins. However, we cannot
as yet reliably evaluate the threshold conditions for mobilisation and
stabilisation of dunes like these.



This PhD project will address the issue: *Under what conditions do desert
landforms become active, and under what conditions do they stabilise?*

The last few decades (1990s – present) include the extreme Millennium
Drought and recent wet La Niña years. The project will use novel field-,
lab- and GIS-based methods to quantify and compare land-surface activity of
desert-margin dunes in natural bushland and adjacent farmland in the
southeastern Australian mallee region, to decouple the human land-use
component from natural landscape response to short-term climate variability
over the last decades.



Candidates are expected to have a strong background in physical geography,
Earth sciences and/or GIS and remote sensing. Experience in GIS and
machine-learning applications to GIS is desirable, but not essential. The
project will include national and international collaborations, including
with stakeholders in the field region.



-- 
Kathryn Fitzsimmons (she/her
<https://www.pridetraining.org.au/pages/pronoun-page>)
Associate Professor of Physical Geography
School of Earth Atmosphere and Environment
Monash University
Clayton VIC
Australia
+61 3 9902 4947

Adjunct Associate Professor
Monash University European Research Foundation
<https://www.monash.edu/muerf>

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