Postdoc position to model non-perennial stream networks
Your mission :
The Watershed Research Lab at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is seeking a postdoctoral researcher to model non-perennial stream networks in Swiss headwater catchments.
Stream networks are important flow pathways along which water transports solutes and sediments, and thus are essential for local and regional biodiversity. Field observations in headwater catchments have shown that many low-order streams are non-perennial, depending on hydro-climatic factors and on the catchments’ landscape and subsurface characteristics. As a result, headwater stream networks expand and contract over time. The spatial extent and associated water and solute fluxes of these transient stream networks are not yet well modelled, thus making it difficult to predict potential ecohydrological impacts of land-use management and climate change on headwater tributaries.
In the TempAqua project, we collect novel, high-frequency measurements of water and solute fluxes in different catchments to gain detailed insights into the mechanistic links between non-perennial stream networks and catchment hydrological, biogeochemical and ecological processes. The postdoctoral researcher will implement this process understanding into a functional model, and identify those channel reaches that are likely to permanently fall dry under future climate change, thus providing important information for targeted monitoring and protection of headwater ecosystems.
Main duties and responsibilities include :
- Implement a spatially-distributed representation of the changing linkages between surface and subsurface hydrological processes and the associated stream network geometry into a mechanistic modelling framework
- Model the short-term changes of flowing stream length and discharge at our study sites under current and future climatic conditions
- Test the upscaling- and transferability capability of the model
More details and application link here.