PhD Researcher (AIO) Arid Ecosystems

Accreditation

You will participate in the project “Interspecific facilitation and critical transitions in arid ecosystems” financed by the Netherlands Science Foundation (NWO). The project is a close collaboration between the Environmental Sciences Group at Utrecht University and Community Ecology and Conservation Group at the University of Groningen.

This project aims at examining how increased environmental stress affects facilitative interactions between plants and how this, in turn, might affect the occurrence of critical ecosystem transitions. Key objectives of this study are (1) to understand how increased environmental stress affects spatial associations between facilitative species and protégé plant species, (2) understand how increased biotic and abiotic stress separately and combined affect the strength and direction of facilitative interactions, and (3) to further develop the currently highly debated facilitation – stress model (stress gradient hypothesis). An improved understanding of the mechanisms of facilitation is crucial to achieve early in-time interventions to prevent further degradation and critical transitions in arid ecosystems.

Plant species interactions will be studied in different study areas of (semi-)arid ecosystems containing stress gradients. Spatial species associations, facilitation strengths and recruitment patterns will be measured and incorporated in spatially explicit models.