Postdoctor

Department of Forest Resource Management at SLU, Umeå
The Department conducts teaching and research within the areas of Forest Planning, Forest Remote Sensing, Forest Inventory and Sampling, Mathematical Statistics Applied to Forest Sciences and Landscape Studies. The Department is responsible for several environmental monitoring and assessment programs including the Swedish National Forest Inventory, National Inventory of Landscapes in Sweden, Terrestrial Habitat Monitoring and the Butterfly and Bumblebee Inventory. Research at the Department is focused on multilateral cooperation combining expertise from our many research groups. This gives unique possibilities for creating holistic solutions for the sustainable use of natural resources. The Department has approximately 100 employees. For more information visit www.slu.se/srh

Duties:
We are now looking for a person with a special interest in forest planning. Within the framework of a two-year postdoc project, you will work on developing new procedures for including risk and uncertainties into the planning process and use them to assess the impact that uncertainty has on indicators for economic, ecological and social sustainability. Currently the primary forest decision support systems in Sweden and internationally have very limited procedures for integrating uncertainties into the simulation and optimization processes. The systems were designed using deterministic approaches to efficiently estimate forest product yields, resulting from various silvicultural management activities. While these systems were not developed with the specific intent to assess and manage uncertainty, procedures can be introduced to allow for the use of risk management approaches, such as Monte Carlo analysis as well as stochastic and robust optimization. The methods developed in the project should be implemented into the Heureka system, which is the leading decision support system in Sweden for planning of forestry and for analyzing forest related questions.

The post doc position is part of a larger research project with researchers from Sweden and Finland aiming at exploring the potential impact of uncertainty when evaluating whether or not forest resources are managed and utilized in a sustainable manner.

Qualifications:
You should have a PhD in forest sciences or mathematics and/or statistics with great interest in forest issues, as well as interest in, and preferably experience from, forest management planning, optimization methods and computer-based decision support systems. Computer programming skills are a merit. Great emphasis is placed on personal qualities such as analytical and problem solving ability, ability for independent and ability to collaborate. Good skills to express yourself in writing and verbally in English are a requirement. As postdoctoral appointments are career-developing positions for junior researchers, we are primarily looking for candidates with a doctoral degree that is three years old at most.

Place of work:
Umeå

Form of employment:
Temporary employment, 24 months

Extent:
100%

Starting date:
According to  agreement.

Application:
We welcome your application no later than 2020-05-24. You apply by using the button below.

Union representatives:
https://internt.slu.se/min-anstallning/facket/kontaktpersoner/



The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) develops the understanding and sustainable use and management of biological natural resources. The university ranks well internationally within its subject areas. SLU is a research-intensive university that also offers unique degree programmes in for example rural development and natural resource management, environmental economics, animal science and landscape architecture.

SLU has just over 3,000 employees, 5,000 students and a turnover of SEK 3 billion. The university has invested heavily in a modern, attractive environment on its campuses in Alnarp, Umeå and Uppsala.

www.slu.se

SLU is an equal opportunity employer.