A postdoctoral associate with a passion for conservation science and/or social-ecological science is sought to contribute to a 3-year social-ecological study of sea level rise and land use decisions. The postdoctoral associate will be co-mentored by Drs. Ashley Dayer (social scientist) and Elizabeth Hunter (ecologist) at Virginia Tech and be part of their dynamic labs, as well as part of a project team with a remote sensing professor and PhD student. The university values diversity and continually strives to maintain and promote an inclusive learning and research environment that embrace all students, faculty, and staff. We are particularly interested in applications from persons identifying with groups currently underrepresented in natural resources fields, including but not limited to Black, Indigenous, people of color, people with disabilities, and underrepresented genders. This would include cis women, trans women, trans men, non-binary people, and those who are otherwise marginalized.

The research project is funded by the NASA Land-cover and Land-use Change program. We are studying sea level rise in mid-Atlantic coastal landscapes, especially agricultural and forestry lands, as linked socio-ecological systems. Specifically, we are exploring the interplay of ecological responses to SLR and human decision-making and whether natural ecosystems (e.g., marshes, tidal flats) will migrate upslope as a response to SLR. This postdoctoral associate will focus on the component of the project understanding how coastal landowner decisions on working lands may influence land cover of natural ecosystems. We will conduct targeted surveys to identify how the degree of change influences behaviors and decisions, as well as what other factors modulate or constrain those decisions (e.g., tax rates, market value for products). We will integrate both components (remote sensing model and analyses of landowner behaviors and decisions) in a predictive agent-based model (ABM). We will create scenarios of SLR and economic pressures on landowners and project ABM estimates of relationships between landcover and landowner decisions to predict the type and degree of landcover change. By making these social-ecological connections, we will be able to make better predictions of how land cover will change as a function both of direct SLR impacts and human responses to them.

The postdoctoral associate will: 1) Coordinate project logistics and team activities; 2) Design and lead qualitative and quantitative social science research; 3) Support other research activities in the projects as needed & aligned with the postdoc’s skills and interests (e.g., social-ecological predictive modeling); 4) Mentor undergraduate and graduate students; 5) Publish peer-reviewed articles; 6) Communicate activities and results throughout the project to the coastal conservation community ; and 7) Be an active member of the Hunter and Dayer Labs and a growing post-doc community in the Global Change Center.

The position requires travel to conduct field work in coastal areas of the East Coast of the US and conferences in the US and internationally