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Postdoc LiDAR Habitat Monitoring

**Faculteit/Dienst**:Faculteit der Natuurw., Wiskunde & Informatica**Opleidingsniveau**:Gepromoveerd**Functie type**:Wetenschappelijk Personeel**Sluitingsdatum**:16 juni 2024**Vacaturenummer**:12998- Do you have experience with the ecological analysis of LiDAR data from airborne laser scanning surveys? Are you familiar with habitat and vegetation assessments using airborne remote sensing? Are you interested in developing pipelines and automated processing workflows for LiDAR metric extraction using parallel and distributed computing in a cloud environment?- The Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED) at the University of Amsterdam is looking for an ambitious and highly motivated Postdoc in LiDAR habitat monitoring for a 30-month (2.5 year) position within the European-funded project MAMBO.- The central objective of the project MAMBO (Modern Approaches to the Monitoring of BiOdiversity) is to make use of advancements in technology for biodiversity monitoring in Europe. A core task of the project is to advance the automated execution of workflows for habitat condition metrics from LiDAR and drone imagery for EU habitat monitoring. By deriving high-resolution LiDAR metrics of vegetation and terrain for measuring habitat condition from massive (country-wide) datasets it will enable the cost-efficient nature management and monitoring of biodiversity and ecosystems. This requires the processing of LiDAR point clouds using High Performance Computing (HPC) pipelines and parallel and distributed computing on remote (cloud) infrastructures.- Your work will be embedded in the Biogeography & Macroecology (BIOMAC) lab of the Theoretical and Computational Ecology Department at IBED. It will involve collaborations with an international team of researchers across Europe and connect to Dutch biodiversity projects such as LTER-LIFE and the biodiversity monitoring demonstration sites of ARISE.**What are you going to do?**Tasks and responsibilities**:

- Handling and processing massive LiDAR point clouds derived from country-wide airborne laser scanning surveys or site-specific drone flight campaigns to derive habitat condition metrics;
- Using (or extending) existing high-throughput workflows (e.g. Laserfarm) and free and open source cross-platform Python tools (e.g. Laserchicken) for the standardized retrieval of vegetation structure metrics;
- Developing new Jupyter Notebooks for LiDAR habitat condition metrics calculations and automating workflow deployment and efficient computing on remote infrastructures such as LifeWatch ERIC, the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), or public clouds (e.g. Azure and Google);
- Generating and publishing broad-scale, high resolution datasets of LiDAR habita condition metrics for multiple countries and/ or multiple time periods;
- Giving lectures and talks and contributing to teaching workshop participants on using the developed tools;
- Working with ecologists, remote sensing scientists, computer scientists and stakeholders from various research institutes, universities, and nature reserves;
- Writing publications in peer-reviewed journals to present the scientific results or developed tools;

**What do you have to offer?**
- Your experience and profile:
- A PhD in LiDAR, remote sensing, physical geography, Earth science, landscape ecology or a closely related field;
- Interest, passion and experience in using LiDAR data for ecology and biodiversity science;
- Exceptional quantitative skills and profound experience in processing LiDAR point clouds (e.g. scripting/programming in Python) and handling of remote sensing datasets;
- Familiarity with Jupyter Notebooks and computational workflows;
- Experience in High Performance Computing (HPC) processing pipelines and parallel and distributed computing;
- Willingness to work in a multidisciplinary team (remote sensing, ecology, computer science; software engineering);
- Proficiency in scientific writing and successful and strong track-record of publications;
- Ability to speak and communicate in English at an academic level;
- Ability to work independently and self-motivated;
- Work experience in a European country.

**Our offer**
- We offer a temporary employment contract for 38 hours per week for a period of 12 months, with the possibility to the extend the contract for another 18 months upon a positive evaluation of your performance. The preferred starting date is as soon as possible.-
- Besides the salary and a vibrant and challenging environment at Science Park we offer you multiple fringe benefits:
- 232 holiday hours per year (based on fulltime) and extra holidays between Christmas and 1 January;
- multiple courses to follow from our Teaching and Learning Centre;
- multiple courses on topics such as leadership for academic staff;
- multiple courses on topics such as time management, and an online learning platform with 100+ different courses;
- 7 weeks birth leave (partner leave) with 10