Date

Postdoctoral Position Available
Sensitivity of Arctic Coastal Dynamics to Change
Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research
Potsdam, Germany

Application deadline: Sunday, 31 May 2009

For further information, please contact:
Paul Overduin
Email: paul.overduin [at] awi.de


The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) seeks
applicants for a two-year postdoctoral position as part of the new
Helmholtz Society for Research (HGF) Joint Russian-German Research
Group. The group will work on a project to assess the sensitivity of
arctic coastal dynamics to change.

The central objective of the group is to identify processes forcing
coastal erosion rates along coasts with varying ground ice contents and
to quantify the consequences of that erosion in the near-shore zone, in
particular the release of carbon and sediment currently sequestered in
permafrost. The project has a three-fold focus:
1. Changing coastal morphology,
2. Coastal fluxes, chiefly using remote sensing, and
3. Environmental forcing of coastal change.

The position requires extensive fieldwork in the Siberian Arctic, the
Kara and Laptev Seas, and participation in coordination workshops.
Willingness to travel and prior field experience are required. Fieldwork
will involve coastline surveying, including sampling and description of
the coastal geomorphology and carrying out detailed bathymetric and
seabed subsurface surveys. The successful candidate will coordinate
field activities with project partners, will work successfully as part
of a multidisciplinary team, and must be fluent in English. Good command
of Russian will be considered an advantage.

This position will focus mainly on changing coastal morphology. The
project is led by Paul Overduin in the Periglacial Research section of
the AWI, in co-operation with researchers from the project partners: the
Faculty of Geography at M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, the
Permafrost Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Yakutsk, the
Nansen International Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in St.
Petersburg, and the GKSS Institute for Coastal Research, in Hamburg,
Germany.

To apply, please send applications, under reference number 26/P, by
Sunday, 31 May 2009 to:
Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research
Forschungsstelle Potsdam
Personalabteilung
Postfach 60 01 49
14401 Potsdam

Applications must include a CV, list of publications, a short
description of research goals, 2 letters of reference, and academic
transcripts from the most recently awarded degree.

For further information, please contact:
Paul Overduin
Email: paul.overduin [at] awi.de

Information on AWI and the Potsdam research center can be found at:
http://www.awi.de.

With a view towards increasing the proportion of female scientists, AWI
specifically encourages female candidates to apply. Severely disabled
applicants with essentially identical technical and personal suitability
will be preferentially selected.