Postdoc (80%) Soil Fertility and Soil Protection

Introduction

Soil compaction due to forest or agricultural traffic alters pore spaces, which may trigger an array of adverse impacts on soil ecological services and functions. Our knowledge regarding soil compaction recovery mechanisms, rates and recovery times is limited.

Tasks

- Advance our understanding of the mechanical behaviour of forest and arable soils; in particular, on resilience and soil structure recovery after compaction

- Responsibility for data acquisition, management and analyses in the Soil Structure Observatory long-term field experiment that includes in situ monitoring of state variables and periodic in situ soil and crop measurements and sampling

- Estimation of compaction risks and evaluation of the resilience of forest soils to compaction, within the framework of the EU-project "EFFORTE"

- Writing scientific publications

- Collaboration with national and international partners

Requirements

- PhD degree in environmental sciences, earth sciences, applied physics, agricultural or forestry science or similar

- strong analytical skills, programming skills, knowledge of statistical analyses of field data and time series, experience in field work

- a genuine interest in soil structure and interactions between soil biology, soil chemistry and soil physics

- highly motivated, achievement-oriented, communicative personality with a capacity for teamwork

- knowledge of two official Swiss languages. Good knowledge of spoken and written English are required. Working languages are English and German

Organisation

Agroscope is an innovative research institute for agriculture and nutrition run according to the principles of New Public Management. Agroscope is part of the federal administration and is attached to the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research EAER. It has research stations at a number of sites around Switzerland but its head office is in Bern (Liebefeld). The Agroscope Institute of Sustainability Sciences at Zurich-Reckenholz conducts research for an environmental friendly and competitive agriculture. The research group Soil Fertility and Soil Protection focuses on soil management impacts on soil health. We offer research work in an interdisciplinary project team, competent supervision and a modern research infrastructure.

Start date: 1 October 2016, or as agreed. Duration: 18 months.
Place of work 8046 Zürich-Affoltern
Salary According to the standards of the Swiss National Science Foundation
Employment level 80%

Application

We look forward to receiving your online application, including a research statement, CV and list of publications, copy of up to three research papers, academic transcripts and the addresses of 2-3 referees in a single PDF file to human.resources@agroscope.admin.ch For further information, please feel free to contact Dr Thomas Keller, project coordinator (thomas.keller@agroscope.admin.ch, +41 58 468 76 05). Please do not send applications to this email address.