SOILS RESEARCH TO DELIVER GREENHOUSE GAS REMOVALS AND ABATEMENT TECHNOLOGIES (SOILS-R-GGREAT)

The studentship will focus on modelling soil greenhouse gas (GGR) removal options. The student will be based at University of Aberdeen and will partner with CCAFS. Dr Lini Wollenberg (CCAFS) will be a co-supervisor. The student will work with process-based models and with CCAFS data and tools. The project will involve running process-based models and decision support tools and comparing to soil carbon change data from meta-analyses. Through CCAFS, the student will also have access to a vast dataset of field trials carried out at CGIAR institutions, and will visit the AfSIS team at ICRAF, the TSBF team at CIAT Nairobi, the soil carbon team at IITA, and the pasture team at CIAT Colombia. The studentship will allow further exploration of the models and data than is necessary for simply assessing GGR potential - it will for example allow ecosystem service trade-offs to be fully explored with the models / datasets, it will allow the temporal dynamics of GGR to be explored and will allow trade-offs between alternative uses of biomass to be fully explored. The studentship will allow the student to pursue curiosity-driven research within this broad area of research, and will allow previously unexploited synergies between the models and data to be harnessed, leading to high impact publications.