The Northern Research Station is hiring a Research Ecologist/Research Meteorologist (GS-0408/1340-12/13) with a duty location in Durham, NH.
Applications are only being accepted at USAJOBS (Announcement link below) until November 24, 2023. Please circulate this vacancy announcement notice to as many potential candidates as possible. We are seeking a diverse pool of qualified applicants, and therefore especially encourage applications by groups under-represented in science and in the USDA Forest Service.
For more information about the position please review the Job Announcement or contact Erik A. Lilleskov, PhD at erik.a.lilleskov@usda.gov.
The USDA Forest Service’s Northern Research Station develops science that sheds light on how ecosystems ranging from forests to urban areas work and the challenges that threaten them. Learn more about the Northern Research Station by visiting https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/nrs.
Within the Northern Research Station, the scientist is a member of the Research Work Unit NRS-06, Climate, Fire, and Carbon Cycle Sciences. The unit’s mission is to develop and provide the basic science, quantitative methods, and technology needed to make decisions about forest ecosystems and the atmosphere related to climate change, fire, and carbon. These three broad topic areas are integrated through crosscutting problems that address quantitative methods for ecosystem science and processes of climate variability and change. The following are examples of the types of problems addressed by this team relevant to the current position: 1) understand how climate variability, management, and disturbance affect forest carbon, water, and energy exchange, 2) improve forest carbon management and increase understanding of belowground ecosystem processes, and 3) understand how changes in forests and forest management affect the climate system. Our group includes a strong empirical and modeling ecosystem research team as well as the Northern Institute for Applied Climate Science (NIACS) and the Northern Forest Hub and Northeastern Climate Hub.
Position details:
This position is with the USDA Forest Service, NRS, Climate, Fire and Carbon Cycle Sciences Research Work Unit (NRS-06). As a research position, it has the potential for promotion to GS-15 or ST level via evaluation under the Research Grade Evaluation Guide.
Major Duties
• The scientist will improve understanding of forest greenhouse gas, water, and energy exchange at multiple scales in time and space to better inform decisions that are made concerning forest management, carbon sequestration, natural disturbance, and the climate system. The major aim of this work is to understand how a changing climate impacts the functioning, carbon storage, and climate forcing (feedbacks to climate change) of managed and unmanaged forest and wetland ecosystems. Forest ecosystems generally remove CO2 from the atmosphere and may be more actively managed to serve as nature-based climate solutions.
• The scientist will utilize flux tower data and related methods to better understand how ecosystems can be managed to increase the uptake and persistence of stored carbon and will address other questions relating to forest climate feedbacks. This involves developing and testing new ways of making and interpreting measurements of ecosystem gas exchange and bringing field data (ecosystem flux using diverse methods such as eddy covariance and remote sensing, intensive biometric data such as tree ring increment, extensive data such as inventories) and models together.
• Collaboration with work unit scientists and other partners in the production, use, and evaluation of models of surface-atmosphere exchange and the use of innovative data assimilation and machine learning techniques are central to this problem area. Of particular importance is the need to collaborate with modelers on the development of models addressing biogeochemical and biophysical climate feedbacks between natural ecosystems (primarily forests and wetlands) and the climate system that can be used to inform ecosystem management.
• This research is grounded in key national networks of intensive monitoring sites, including those of AmeriFlux and the Forest Service Experimental Forest Network and related long-term research sites. The scientist would have lead responsibility for the AmeriFlux core eddy covariance site at Howland Research Forest which has been run by the US Forest Service for over 25 years. The scientist would also be expected to lead the integration of eddy flux work at this site with that at multiple other forest and peatland locations managed by NRS scientists (e.g., Silas Little Experimental Forest, Marcell Experimental Forest, peatland flux towers in tropical Andes and Amazon), and lead an eddy covariance working group that can inform larger scale questions in the region and globally.
Additional details and application information can be found at https://www.usajobs.gov/job/757014700