PhD position or Postdoctoral researcher (m/f/d): Effects of global livestock management on wildlife movement

The Global Land Systems and Biodiversity group at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (SBiK-F) in Frankfurt am Main offers a PhD position (65%) or postdoctoral position (up to 60%), TV-H E13, limited to four years and starting from 1 January 2027. The group takes a system perspective on how the production, trade and consumption of food and other biomass affect ecosystems and people. The position belongs to VEBITA, a project of Senckenberg, Marburg University and the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE) that analyses GPS and sensor data from animals with statistical and AI-based methods to detect how behaviour changes under land use, climate change, habitat loss and infrastructure development, as a basis for conservation early-warning systems.

Livestock keeping has the largest spatial footprint of all land uses, and mammalian livestock biomass exceeds that of all remaining wild mammals by an order of magnitude. The project develops a refined biodiversity-footprint approach capturing how livestock management strategies affect wild mammal movement and how management could be adapted: classifying global livestock management systems, analysing global patterns of livestock effects on wildlife movement, and integrating perspectives of farmers, conservationists and regulators, with results feeding into science-policy debates.

MSc (for the PhD position) or PhD (for the postdoctoral position) in sustainability science, physical geography, ecology or a related field; programming in R, Python or similar and experience with heterogeneous datasets; excellent English; interest in inter- and transdisciplinary and science-policy work. Single-PDF online application citing Ref. #11-26021.