PostDoc Greenhouse gas balance of fen meadow landscapes

Function
Drained organic soils are an important source of greenhouse gases worldwide. Also in the low lying areas of the Netherlands drainage of its organic soils, with the aim to enable more intensive usage of the land, leads to oxidation of organic material, significant carbon dioxide release and subsequent land subsidence. As part of climate mitigation policies the Dutch government seeks to reduce these emissions by at least 1 Mton in 2030. In support of these policies, several research projects funded at (sub-, inter-) national level (such as the Netherlands Research Programme on Greenhouse Gas Dynamics from Peatlands and Organic soils, and PeatPals) aim to investigate the effects of various mitigation measures on total greenhouse gas balance of the targeted areas.

The Earth Systems and Global Change group (ESC) of Wageningen University & Research has built up a considerable track record in studying interactions between greenhouse gas exchange, hydrology, land use, and climate (change). ESC contributes to this peatland research with (mobile) tower based eddy covariance measurements of carbon dioxide and methane exchange at field scale and with airborne measurements using the same technique at regional scale. Over the past 5 years we have built a strong measurement programme that include 20+ operational sites with the longest records already spanning 5 years, and over 700 flying hours. These complement measurements at plot scale by other consortium members using a variety of techniques, enabling quantitative description and understanding of processes responsible for the production of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. One of the challenges for ESC is to link te various measurement scales to come up with distributed, wall-to-wall landscape budgets of these greenhouse gases. We are a team of ten, closely interacting people, including (field)technicians, PhD, PostDoc and senior staff.