PhD position- Remote sensing integration in Sustainable Forest Management

University of Molise

Sustainable forest management (SFM) is globally accepted as the main goal for forest policy and practice. In order to monitor, evaluate and report progress towards sustainable forest management in Europe region six rigorous, scientifically and policy robust headline criteria were endorsed, measured by a set of quantitative (35) and qualitative (17) Pan-European Indicators for SFM (MCPFE, 2003). Because of the spatial variability of SFM indicators, even within the same forest type (e.g. growing stock, biomass, tree species composition), mapping their values and changes over time has the potential to aggregate complex information particularly in the case of forest management units of medium- to large size
The challenge is to demonstrate the feasibility of integration of data collected from forest inventories with remotely sensed information for the spatial estimation of selected Forest Europe quantitative indicators of SFM, on a technical scale. The goal is to map Forest Europe SFM indicators related to the maintenance of forest resources and their contribution to carbon sequestration, forest health and vitality and biodiversity conservation, to stratify medium to large scale forest management units by the EEA classification of European Forest Types (EFTs), so as to optimize the spatial estimation of SFM indicators. The final aim is to develop a Forest Information System, aggregating multiple indicator maps, to support forest managers to evaluate success towards SFM at the scale of the forest management unit, taking into account the increasing cross-sectoral complexity of the challenges launched by the new EU Forest Strategy (COM(2013) 659) and EU Biodiversity Strategy (COM (2011) 244).
The PhD students will participate in interdisciplinary research projects with international cooperation and networking opportunities. The research will be accompanied by a teaching program in forestry, statistics and informatics. The main place of employment is Pesche (Isernia), Italy.
The amount of remuneration is set at € 1000 per month for a 3 years duration.
Applicants are expected to have completed their bachelor’s and master’s degrees in a life science subject or agriculture with very good grades, preferably with a focus on forestry sciences. Fluent spoken and written English language skills are essential.
The University of Molise are equal opportunity employers and are committed to increasing the number of individuals with disabilities in their workforce and therefore encourage applications from such qualified individuals. University of Molise seek to increase the number of women in those areas where they are underrepresented and therefore explicitly encourage women to apply.

Further details

Contacts:
Project coordinator: Prof. Marco Marchetti, email: marchettimarco@unimol.it
PhD coordinator: Prof. Gabriella Stefania Scippa, email: scippa@unimol.it

segnalato da Bruno Lasserre