PhD Position in Environmental Science in the Department of Crop and Soil Science at Oregon State University

We are looking for a motivated PhD student with background in soil physics, HYDRUS, SAWT and AnnAGNPS modeling, and soil-plant-water-nutrient relation to join our team starting Fall 2017. The potential candidate would investigate the loss of solutes (nutrients and pesticides) from Oregon’s agricultural fields through field experimentation, small (HYDRUS), and large (AnnAGNPS and SAWT) scale modeling.

As part of the PhD research project, the candidate will instrument field sites with Sentek access tube, Irrometer soil solution samplers, and Decagon GS3 to monitor spatiotemporal changes in soil water and solute content at different fields. In addition to the above-mentioned instrumentation, the candidate will be in charge of programming the Campbell Scientific dataloggers, and installing Irrometer tensiometers below the root zone. Maintenance of the deployed sensors and running dataloggers, soil sampling (disturbed and undisturbed), soil moisture measurement using Sentek Diviner 2000 and laboratory measurements of nitrate concentration, soil physical and textural properties, water retention properties, hydraulic conductivity (saturated and unsaturated) of the soil samples, leaf water potential, as well as leaf sampling and analysis for nutrient concentration are also the responsibility the selected candidate.

The field data is then used in HYDRUS to estimate soil and plant parameter required to properly model water movement and solute (nutrients and pesticides) transport within the root zone as well as uptake of water and nutrient. The HYDRUS model will then be used to evaluate the effect of different practices on loss of water and solute out of the agricultural land at field scale. In a broader scale, the candidate will evaluate the impact of agricultural practices on water quality using SAWT and other water quality models like AnnAGNPS. Ability to drive is required for this position.

Please send your application to Maziar Kandelous at maziar.kandelous@oregonstate.edu.

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Von:

Maziar Kandelous
maziar.kandelous@oregonstate.edu
Oregon State University
Corvallis, Oregon

Ansprechpartner: Maziar Kandelous, maziar.kandelous@oregonstate.edu