Tag Archives: conservation biology

General

2012 Smith Postdoctoral fellowships

Leave a comment

The Smith Fellowship is a great opportunity for a soon to be or recent PhDs involved in conservation.  Their 2012 call has just been announced.

The Society for Conservation Biology is pleased to solicit applications for the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship Program. These two year post-doctoral fellowships enable outstanding early-career scientists to improve and expand their research skills while directing their efforts towards problems of pressing conservation concern for the United States.

Each Fellow is mentored by both an academic sponsor who encourages the Fellow’s continued development as a conservation scientist, and a conservation practitioner who helps to connect the Fellow and her/his research to practical conservation challenges.

Fellows will spend up to three weeks per year during their fellowship attending orientation and training events. These offerings provide opportunities to cultivate professional networks and to gain better understanding of applied research needs. Fellows will participate as a group in three or more of these Program-sponsored meetings, conferences, or professional development events each year.

The Program especially encourages individuals who want to better link conservation science and theory with pressing policy and management applications to apply. We envision that the cadre of scientists supported by the Smith Fellows Program eventually will assume leadership positions across the field of conservation science. Fellows are selected on the basis of innovation, potential for leadership and strength of proposal.

The deadline for receipt of application materials is 16 September 2011. The Program expects to select four Fellows in January 2012 for appointments to start between March and September 2012. Fellowship awards include an annual salary of $50,000, benefits, and generous travel and research budgets. For detailed proposal guidelines, please visit http://www.conbio.org/smithfellows/apply/. Questions may be directed to Shonda Foster, Program Coordinator, by emailing sfoster@conbio.org.

Ecosystem services

Four PhD positions in sustainability and biodiversity

Leave a comment

My colleague Joern Fischer is offering four new PhD positions at Leuphana University Lueneburg. He writes:

Expressions of interest are being sought for four new PhD positions, for commencement in 2011 (details to be negotiated). Please register your interest and send your CV to Joern Fischer (Joern.Fischer@uni.leuphana.de , also see https://sites.google.com/site/joernfischerspage/). Do not send complete applications at this stage.

The project
Unprecedented global change poses an urgent challenge to humanity because it threatens ecosystems and human well- being, especially in poor countries. We will implement a transdisciplinary research agenda to foster sustainable development in ancient agricultural landscapes in Central Romania. The area is fascinating because ancient agricultural practices without machinery or artificial fertilisers have maintained unusually high biodiversity, from large carnivores to rare orchids. Following its recent inclusion in the European Union, Central Romania now faces a delicate balancing act between the aspirations of local people for greater economic prosperity and the region’s unique heritage values. You will be part of a team involving natural scientists, social scientists and regional stakeholders. We will map biodiversity and the ecosystem services generated by it, and will identify formal and informal institutions that can provide leverage points for enabling sustainable land use practices.

The project is funded through a Sofja Kovalevskaja Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (through funds by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research). Visit https://sites.google.com/site/landscapefutures/Home

PhD 1: The future of birds and large carnivores
Primary focus: ecology. This component will gather data on birds and large carnivores, will map their distribution, quantify habitat relationships, and analyse likely changes under different scenarios of future development. Methods will include field surveys, statistical modelling, and GIS applications.

PhD 2: The future of plants and butterflies
Primary focus: ecology. The study area is exceptionally rich in plants and butterflies. This component will gather original field data, will map the distribution of the groups, quantify habitat relationships, and analyse likely changes under different development scenarios. Methods will include field surveys, statistical modelling, and GIS applications.

PhD 3: Cultural ecosystem services and historical changes
Primary focus: social sciences, humanities. This component will analyse land use changes since the middle ages, and will quantify the cultural benefits that people derive from nature. The possible impacts of different future trajectories on the provision of cultural ecosystem services will be assessed. Methodology will be broad and flexible, potentially including literature reviews, analysis of historical sources (e.g. old maps), interviews and workshops with local people, and GIS analysis. Experience with some of these methods, and ability to speak Romanian, will be advantages.

PhD 4: Changes in institutional arrangements
Primary focus: social sciences. This component will analyse informal and formal institutions, and their dynamic changes in the past – with a particular emphasis on recent changes since Romania joined the European Union. How can institutional arrangements foster the sustainable development of the region? Methods are flexible, including participatory methods with local people, and analysis of official policy documents (e.g. regarding EU agri-environment schemes).
This well-funded project includes collaborative links with St. Andrews University, Cambridge University, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and the Mihai Eminescu Trust (Romania). All components will be theoretically grounded in a shared conceptual framework of ecosystem services, resilience theory, and social-ecological systems analysis. The research team will also involve more senior scientists who will focus on other, complementary aspects.

General

2011 Smith Fellowships Annoucement

Leave a comment

I had a Smith Fellowship during my post-doc and it was a good experience.  The 2011 call is open now, and they are open to individuals who want to extend the social-ecological frontiers of conservation biology.

The Society for Conservation Biology is pleased to solicit applications for the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship Program. These two year post-doctoral fellowships enable outstanding early-career scientists to improve and expand their research skills while directing their efforts towards problems of pressing conservation concern for the United States.

Each Fellow is mentored by both an academic sponsor who encourages the Fellow’s continued development as a conservation scientist, and a conservation practitioner who helps to connect the Fellow and her/his research to practical conservation challenges.

Fellows will spend up to four weeks per year during their fellowship attending orientation and training events. These offerings provide opportunities to cultivate professional networks and to gain better understanding of applied research needs. Fellows will participate as a group in three or more of these Program-sponsored meetings, conferences, or professional development events each year.

The Program especially encourages individuals who want to better link conservation science and theory with pressing policy and management applications to apply. We envision that the cadre of scientists supported by the Smith Fellows Program eventually will assume leadership positions across the field of conservation science. Fellows are selected on the basis of innovation, potential for leadership and strength of proposal.

The deadline for receipt of application materials is 24 September 2010. The Program expects to select four Fellows in January 2011 for appointments to start between March and September 2011. Fellowship awards include an annual salary of $50,000, benefits, and generous travel and research budgets. For detailed proposal guidelines, please visit http://www.conbio.org/smithfellows/apply/. Questions may be directed to Shonda Foster, Program Coordinator, by emailing sfoster@conbio.org.

Inequality

Conservation Social Science

Leave a comment

Conservation Biology has published three ‘virtual issues’ of Conservation Biology for the International Year of Biodiversity.  The issues each include 10-15 previously published articles from Conservation Biology, but access to these articles is now free of charge.  The virtual issues are:

Two of my articles are in the “Conservation Social Science” issue.  The first article was a collaboration with my Smith Fellows cohort, and the second was written by Tim Holland, who did his Masters with Andrew Gonzalez and I.

Resilience colleagues also have two papers reprinted, the first in the climate change special issue, and the second also in the social science issue

Ideas

Mammals better invaders than birds

Leave a comment

Journal Watch Online reports an interesting finding:

According to the “tens rule”, roughly ten percent of introduced species become established and ten percent of those become invasive. Only it doesn’t hold for mammals or birds, according to Jonathan Jeschke’s study, the findings of which are published in Diversity and Distributions.

The Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, researcher found that fifty percent of introduced bird species become established, of which 34 percent become invasive. Mammals are even more successful colonists, with an amazing 79 percent finding a permanent home and 63 percent of those going on to become a pain in the proverbial for conservationists. That makes mammals almost fifty times more effective invaders than the tens rule predicts. How wrong can one be?

Source: Jeschke JM (2008) Across islands and continents, mammals are more successful invaders than birds. Diversity and Distributions DOI: 10.1111/j.1472-4642.2008.00488.x

I wonder what explains this difference between mammals and birds.  Is it something to do with biology or what species people move around?  It would be interesting to see how the patterns vary with body mass.

Another paper by Jeschke is also interesting.  Invasion success of vertebrates in Europe and North America – which showed that there does not seem to be ecological imperialism between vertabrates, and that invasion success is higher than expect.