草地多功能性建模博士职位

Grasslands cover large areas in Europe and foster potential to provide multiple functions, such as ecosystem services. The Horizon Europe GrassConnect project aims to study the effects of farm management on ecosystem service provision, biodiversity, grassland productivity, cultural value, and people’s livelihoods.

GrassConnect is a recently granted, interdisciplinary, and multi-actor European project with 31 partners in 14 countries. GrassConnect will address challenges derived from grassland intensification, by assessing multifunctionality strategies at field, farm and supply-chain level, and aid decision-making to increase the provision of ecosystem services from grasslands.

Within this project, we offer a PhD position ‘Exploring grassland multifunctionality through modelling ’ to study the effects of management in grass-based farms in the Netherlands on biodiversity. This PhD position will focus on grass-based production systems in the Netherlands, whereas GrassConnect will offer the opportunity to engage with other partners covering different grassland systems, production systems and pedo-climatic conditions. Some farm data is available from past and ongoing projects.

After searching, selecting, and analyzing, the data will be used to assess the effects of management on biodiversity and ecosystem services applying modelling approaches from the Animal Production Systems group of Wageningen University & Research. The candidate will be based on the campus of Wageningen University & Research.

Your duties and responsibilities include: • Develop a Research Proposal and a Training and Supervision Plan, to structure the 4-year PhD trajectory; • Master the state of the art in ecosystem services delivery from grasslands under diverse management regimes; • Investigate mechanistic relationships between grassland management, ecosystem services and livestock productivity (e.g. regression analysis, mechanistic modelling, meta-analysis); • Assess environmental and socioeconomic performance of dairy farms under diverse scenarios using a bio-economic optimization model (Dairy LP); • Disseminate the research results by writing papers and presenting your work at international conferences.

You will work here This PhD will be situated at the Animal Production Systems group of Wageningen University & Research. Here we analyze and explore the roles of livestock in food systems with the aim of making these food systems more sustainable. The group focuses on unravelling the complexity of livestock systems and exploring trade-offs and synergies of innovations regarding environmental impact, animal welfare, and economic viability, to design a more sustainable future.

This PhD project is at the interface of biodiversity and modelling domains within the Animal Production Systems group. You will work under the supervision of Dr. Raimon Ripoll-Bosch and Dr. Aart van der Linden . Raimon Ripoll-Bosch focuses on understanding the complex interactions between livestock, nature (biodiversity and ecosystem services) and economy, to design enabling environments for the transitions to nature-inclusive agroecosystems. Aart van der Linden focuses on modelling farm systems with crops and livestock, including ruminant production on grasslands to improve resource use efficiency and reduce environmental impacts.