The University of California Merced is looking to support a PhD student (stipend, tuition, health coverage) to work on a NSF project, Managing Future Risk of Increasing Simultaneous Megafires starting as early as summer 2021. This project will involve colleagues at the University of Washington and National Center for Atmospheric Research with expertise in climate science, public policy, and fire ecology. Elements of this work are to understand biophysical influences on fire activity at different scales, particularly related to widespread lightning-ignited fires, and develop convergent approaches for understanding how the confluence of fire suppression and land management approaches can ameliorate future synchronous large fires. Interested students should send an email with their CV to John Abatzoglou to discuss this opportunity further. Applicants should have enthusiasm for scientific computing and climate impacts.
Desired qualifications:
Experience with a scripting language (MATLAB/R/Python)
Experience working with large and/or diverse datasets
Experience with statistical approaches or quantitative approaches
M.S. degree in relevant discipline
Doctoral coursework can be in the multi-disciplinary Environmental Systems (ES) PhD program or Management of Complex Systems (MCS) PhD program.
