You will work within the recently funded SNSF project FIRE ("Fire Impacts on the Response of terrestrial Ecosystems"). Wildfires are a natural component of the global carbon cycle, but their frequency, intensity, and severity are increasing with climate change. This project investigates how wildfires affect carbon cycling and transit times at the landscape scale, particularly in the deeper unsaturated zone and in groundwater, and over longer periods of time. You will be part of an interdisciplinary team of collaborators based in Switzerland and the USA, and conduct fieldwork in caves in remote locations of the USA that were recently affected by burning. The focus of this PhD will be on characterizing and quantifying carbon sources and transit times across the critical zone (soil to groundwater and laterally). These results will be linked with datasets produced by the other team members who will focus on chemical transformation and subsurface transport of organic compounds, microbial community responses, and the reconstruction of long-term fire impacts using cave mineral deposits. Besides fieldwork, your tasks will include conducting geochemical analysis on fluid, gaseous and solid samples, in particular radiocarbon analysis.
The Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL is part of the ETH Domain. Approximately 600 people work on the sustainable use and protection of the environment and on the handling of natural hazards.
