We offer a full-time postdoctoral position (starting January 2024, up to 3 years) in a field spanning vegetation science, biodiversity, ecological statistics, and geographical information systems. The candidate will join the international team of Dr. Petr Keil at the Dpt. of Spatial Sciences at the Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, Czech Republic.

Research project and topic: The research will be part of 3-year project GRACE (“GRAssland Communities Experiment (GRACE): 300 years of insight from a large-scale natural experiment”, 2024-2026). GRACE is a joint grant from the Austrian FWF and Czech GACR, with co-PIs Adam Clark (University of Graz) and Petr Keil (CZU, Prague), and cooperation partners Franz Essl at Uni. Vienna and Hana Skokanová at VUKOZ, Brno. Other external collaborators include Helge Bruelheide and Ute Jandt at Uni. Halle (Germany), Stefan Dullinger at Uni. Vienna, and Milan Chytrý at Masaryk University Brno, as well as the European Vegetation Archive (EVA) and its ReSurveyEurope initiatives.

The research focuses on tracking interactive dynamics of landscapes and grassland plant communities, based on the natural experiment arising from differences in landscape structure along the Austrian-Czech border region.

Job description: The work will be mostly computational, with an opportunity to participate in summer fieldwork (optional). It will use the European Vegetation Archive data, historical land use data, and data from our own field surveys. This work will involve data cleaning and management, programming, and custom-tailored statistical analyses (in R, Python, Julia, or similar). There will be intensive use of geographic information systems (GIS). The postdoc will work with collaborators in Brno, Graz, and Vienna. Apart from being the lead author on papers and presenting on conferences, the postdoc will help with organization of meetings with the project co-PIs.

How to apply? Details, requirements, salary, and application instructions are here. Application deadline is 31th of October 2023.