Stillingstittel:
PhD position - Sustainable land use: representation and improvements in environmental assessments (IVT-71/16)

Stillingsbeskrivelse:

NTNU - kunnskap for en bedre verden

Ved NTNU, Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet, skapes kunnskap for en bedre verden og løsninger som kan forandre hverdagen. 

Fakultet for ingeniørvitenskap og teknologiInstitutt for energi og prosessteknikk

Jobbnorge ID: 125069

This PhD will be positioned with the main supervisor at the Industrial Ecology Programme (IndEcol), Department of Energy and Process Engineering and with a co-supervisor at the Department for Biology and is financed through NTNU sustainability.

NTNU Sustainability is a targeted research area across the university created in order to focus and develop NTNU's contribution to solving major issues that society is facing, including both national and global challenges where NTNU, with its profile and academic strength, can contribute.

NTNU Sustainability has defined four core focus areas:

 

i. Institutional framework conditions: the conditions necessary for implementing sustainable policies and practices;ii. Sustainable urban development: the design and planning of sustainable and resilient cities, communities and regions;iii. Biodiversity and ecosystem services: knowledge about how human activities affect biodiversity and ecosystem functions, and how the use of natural resources can be made more sustainable;iv. Environmental and sustainability analyses: advanced modeling and analyses of environmental impacts and of how to improve sustainability at the society, business and production levels.

 

Additionally, four cross-cutting research areas transverse these core areas, namely ICT as an enabling technology, ethical perspectives related to sustainability, sustainable design and business models, as well as land use and the sustainable use of natural resources. These cross-cutting areas aim at addressing topics across the four main focus areas.

 

The PhD position is advertised for a period of 3 years.

 

This PhD project is planned to bridge the gap between the cross-cutting area of land use, and will be working on the improvement of representing sustainable land use and land use change in environmental assessments.

 

Life Cycle Assessment is nowadays a widely used tool for quantifying environmental impacts of products and processes throughout their whole life cycle in general. Often LCAs are used for decision-making and are included in the developments of policies and regulations. The representation of land use and land use change has made large advancements during the last years, but important issues, such as fragmentation, the influence of barriers, representation of actual species occurrence or recovery times are not yet sufficiently covered.

 

The PhD student's task is therefore to work on improving impact assessment methods dealing with impacts of land use on biodiversity/ecosystem services and to apply them to selected cases. Methodologically, fragmentation, as well as the influence of barriers (e.g., roads, dams or fences) shall be included into life cycle impact assessment methods. This requires setting up a typology of mechanisms leading to fragmentation and identification of potential damages to species. Methodological development should take place on a global level, including spatial differentiation. Global occurrences of species within LCA are today mostly based on species' geographic range areas. Possibilities to extend an existing approach with habitat suitability models shall be investigated.

 

The models and assessment methods developed will be relevant for future decision-making and shall be included in global, operational life cycle impact assessment methods. Met

Minstelønn: 0

Maksimal lønn: 0

Arbeidsgiver Navn: NTNU - Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelig

Arbeidsgiver adresse: Kolbjørn Hejesvei 1B 7491 TRONDHEIM

Job kort beskrivelse: University and higher education teachers

Land: Norge

Region: Sør-Trøndelag

Kilde til jobbtilbud: NAV, Offentlige arbeidsformidlinger, Norge

Lønn valuta: NOK

Lønn periode: Pr. år