Postdoctoral position: Integration of soil ecosystem services assessment in territorial planning

A position is open for a Postdoc Fellowship within the project “Soilserv - Multi-scale assessment of soil ecosystem services in agroecosystems” funded by the French Research Agency (ANR). Soilserv aims to combine biophysical and socio-economic approaches to assess ecosystem services of agricultural soils and to analyse their economic valuation in farmers or public decisions (http://www6.inra.fr/soilserv_eng/).

The post-doc research will focus on soil ecosystem services (SES) assessment in territorial planning procedures, namely in the construction phase of strategic planning documents of large urban territories (SCOT) or of integrated water resources management plans (SAGE). A conceptual model of SES assessment at different spatial scales will be developed and a methodology will be elaborated to evaluate SES at the scale of territories delimited by a SCoT and a SAGE.

Research will be based on real case studies and will associate professional partners involved in their implementation with the academic partners of Soilserv.
 
Form of employment:  full time position for 24 months, starting January 1st 2018; gross salary 2 510 € per month. The working place will be in Rennes for one year (2018) within the UMR SAS research unit and in Nantes for another year (2019) within the SCE society.

Candidate profile: The applicant holds a PhD in Agriculture Sciences or Environmental Sciences with a background in Soil Science. He / she is strongly interested in the application of new concepts of soil systems in decision making procedures in the area of territorial planning. We appreciate high capacity in knowledge integration from different disciplines and research areas. Good communication skills in both French and English are required.

Contact: Christian Walter (UMRSAS Rennes, christian.walter@agrocampus-ouest.fr) and Gilles Warot (SCE, gilles.warot@sce.fr)

Application:  Applications should be sent to Karine.derrien@inra.fr and include: 1) CV, 2) Proof of PhD degree, 3) letter of motivation including a summary of past research, current and future research interests, 4) Names and contact information of at least 2 references.
Closing date for application: October 30th, 2017.