The Energy and Resources Group (ERG) within the Rausser College of Natural Resources (RCNR) at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) seeks applications for an Assistant Project Scientist to further understanding of how climate change and disturbance processes affect vegetation and ecosystem dynamics.

The appointee will work with the Kueppers Lab, which works across tropical, temperate and alpine ecosystems using dynamic regional models and fieldwork to inform stewardship of ecosystems under climate pressure.

As climate change begins to affect a wide range of ecosystems there are key challenges ahead. These include anticipating and understanding potential ecological consequences, developing management options to limit negative outcomes, and quantifying the potential for ecosystems to draw down atmospheric carbon in addition to maintaining other ecoclimatic benefits.

To address these challenges, the Kueppers lab integrates data from climate change experiments and diverse observations into dynamic models of vegetation and ecosystem change. This requires simultaneous consideration of changes in temperature, water balance, CO2 and disturbance regimes, as well as the plant functional diversity within ecosystems that can buffer ecosystem scale response.

The appointee will play a central role in testing, applying and developing a cutting-edge dynamic, demographic, vegetation model of Western U.S. ecosystems and fire regimes. The modeling framework is the Functionally Assembled Terrestrial Ecosystem Simulator (FATES) (see link), which is embedded within the CTSM land surface model, and includes an adapted version of the SPITFIRE model of fire behavior.

The appointee will work with collaborators at multiple Universities and National Laboratories to utilize high-resolution regional atmospheric forcing and evaluate model output with synthesized in situ and remotely sensed observations.

On a day to day basis, the employee will conduct and communicate important original research through some combination of each of the following: synthesizing and analyzing data; running and interpreting model simulations; taking the lead in writing presentations, proposals and progress reports; mentoring and co-mentoring students; giving presentations to a range of audiences; organizing project team meetings; and talking with scientists, land managers and policy makers to inform research objectives. The employee may also supervise research assistants and develop and submit original research proposals.

Goals of the current project include simulating ecological effects of historic management and atmospheric change to understand how compounding drivers interact to produce current vegetation structure, and simulating the response of ecosystem carbon and severe wildfire risk to alternative fuel management and climate scenarios.

Future projects will be developed jointly to address gaps in observations of post-fire vegetation regeneration under climate change and interactions between forest structure and hydrology among other topics.

In addition to pursuing novel and impactful research, the appointee is expected to lead and contribute to grant proposals, mentor graduate and undergraduate students, coordinate multi-institutional collaborations, and cultivate relationships with policy makers, land managers and others invested in the future of Western U.S. ecosystems.