National Center for Atmospheric Research
Boulder, Colorado

Full consideration of applications received by April 7, 2017

The Integrated Assessment Modeling group at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, seeks a postdoctoral researcher in spatial modeling of land use change to develop and apply models at the US and global scale with a focus on agriculture. Key functions in this position are to (1) analyze and employ historical land use and land cover data, including crop-specific changes in agricultural land use, to estimate and validate statistical models of land use change; (2) participate in a comparison of results with those from other land use models; (3) conceive of, and carry out, improvements to the statistical model based on the results of the comparison with observations and with other models; (4) interact with integrated assessment and land surface modelers (including those employing the NCAR Community Land Model, CLM) to incorporate land use change in analyses of climate effects on agriculture, energy, land, and water.
The successful applicant will join an interdisciplinary research group at NCAR that includes both social and natural scientists working on the climate change issue (see https://www2.cgd.ucar.edu/sections/tss/iam). The group develops and applies new socio-economic models, and linkages to climate models, that leverage NCAR’s status as a world-leading climate modeling center.
The position requires expertise in spatial statistical methods; familiarity (or willingness to become familiar) with land use data and modeling at regional to global scales, especially related to agricultural land use; and proficiency in programming in a suitable language (e.g. R, Python, Matlab). Familiarity with Fortran is helpful and experience with geographic information systems is desirable.
This is a full-time two-year term position. For a detailed job description and instructions on how to apply, see goo.gl/Fm57nw.
For more information on the position, contact Brian O’Neill (email: boneill@ucar.edu).