David Godwin

Full posting here:

The University of California, Davis, in collaboration with the USGS Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center (SW CASC, https://www.swcasc.arizona.edu), invites applications for a Postdoctoral Fellowship with a focus on Indigenous-led applications of fire in the Southwest for a 2-year period, beginning June 1, 2021. The postdoc will be able to work across both the Middleton (https://nas.ucdavis.edu/people/beth-middleton) and Safford (https://safford.faculty.ucdavis.edu/people/) research groups, with projects including cultural burning demonstration, outreach, and education (Middleton); cultural burn policy analysis (Middleton); and the ecological impacts of low-intensity fire on SW and Australian ecosystems (Safford). The postdoc will contribute to the need to understand more of the scope of, challenges and opportunities for, and multifaceted outcomes of Indigenous burning, in California and throughout the SW CASC region—in order to better identify regional or state barriers, activate opportunities, and offer support to cultural fire efforts. Following the best practices of Lam et al. (http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol25/iss1/art3/) through research, analysis, synthesis, and knowledge sharing, we endeavor to bridge Western and Indigenous knowledge for fire-focused climate adaptation in southwestern ecosystems. We work collaboratively across the CASC network to respond to research needs and develop relevant products for natural resource managers. Possible areas of focus include the following:

– Analyze, assess, and develop strategies to address the multi-scalar policy barriers and/or opportunities to implementing Indigenous-led traditional burning across land jurisdictions and ecosystems

– Asses the scales at which Indigenous cultural burning may be applied to address climate change in Southwest ecosystems

– Assess the ecological and policy potential for Indigenous burning to be recognized as a carbon sequestration strategy that provides ongoing biodiversity maintenance.

– Evaluate impacts of cultural burning on fish, wildlife, soils, and water, with an emphasis on ecological changes in both terrestrial and freshwater aquatic habitats.

– Examine the interacting effects of climate change and other stressors (e.g., invasive species, drought, land use change) and cultural fire, with a particular emphasis on cumulative and interactive impacts, and other potential beneficial synergistic effects of cultural burning to reduce/moderate climatic variability.

It is important for the incumbent to have experience working collaboratively with Indigenous populations and knowledge systems; demonstrated research and writing skills; a capacity for strong conceptual thinking; a commitment to staying abreast of the most recent and most robust science in Indigenous fire policy and/or ecology; and a desire to work as a member of an interdisciplinary team. Candidates must possess the ability to work harmoniously in teams with shared leadership capacity and they must be able to speak and write about complex issues for diverse audiences.

This opportunity is open to individuals who are obtaining or have obtained a PhD in ecology, forestry/wildland fire science, natural resource policy and management, Native American Studies, geography, or related fields. Candidates must have the PhD in hand by the start date.

Interested candidates should submit an application that includes CV, cover letter, and 2 letters of recommendation through the Recruit online portal at: https://recruit.ucdavis.edu/apply/JPF04105

For full consideration applications should be completed by April 26, 2021. The position is open until filled. This postdoctoral fellowship is part of a larger Postdoctoral Climate Adaptation Scholars (CAS) Program established by the National and Regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers (NRCASC) to support management-relevant research and scientific synthesis of emerging research needs related to climate impacts on fish, wildlife, and ecosystems. The objective of the CAS Program is to provide regional-to-national syntheses of climate change impacts on fire regimes, fire management, and fire response; explore resulting impacts on fish, wildlife and ecosystems; and provide the scientific research necessary to help managers adapt to these changes.

For more information visit:  https://recruit.ucdavis.edu/apply/JPF04105.

The Southeast CASC through North Carolina State University is hiring a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in Data Science that will work on prescribed fire research related to the Southeast. Some details from the listing:

The Department of Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University, in collaboration with the Department of Statistics, the North Carolina Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, and the USGS Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center, will be hiring a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in data science to assist with efforts to develop a prototype early warning system for Prescribed Fire Managers (PFMs). The primary research objective of the successful candidate is to characterize short, medium, and long-term climatological-risk for PFMs in the Southeast US, and to build a framework that allows for optimal decision making under uncertainty.

The successful candidate will work with Drs. Brian Reich (Statistics), Jaime Collazo (Applied Ecology), and Adam Terando (USGS) to model environmental conditions conducive to prescribed burning activities over time scales of days to decades in the future. Three major objectives of the position include 1). Define, identify, and model ‘fail-states’, or the sets of conditions that PFMs wish to avoid 2) Model risk exposure of PFMs given existing numerical model simulations of future climate over near-term (days) to long-term (decades) time scales, and 3) develop spatio-temporal models to characterize extreme wildfire risk on decadal time scales.

Read more details here.