Dear colleagues,
We are looking for a person with a background of climate modelling, physical geography, microclimate processes and familiarity with geographic information systems. The position will be placed at Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences at Stockholm University, but there will be close collaboration with the Rossby Centre at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI).
The broader project aim is to understand the relationship between climate, pathogens and coffee yield, and use this information to optimize management for smallholder farmers. The study area is the Afromontane mountains in southwestern Ethiopia, which is the center of origin of Arabica coffee. Arabica coffee grows here along a narrow altitudinal range, due to its high sensitivity to climate conditions.
During the project, we have used loggers in the soil and air to gather climatic data (soil temperature, air temperature, air humidity) from sixty smallholder coffee farms in an approximately 50 × 30 km landscape. The loggers made one recording per three hours for two years. There are also two climate stations within the area with c. 40 year time series on temperature and precipitation. Within all 60 farms, we have also recorded yearly coffee yield, and the pests and diseases that harm coffee.
We would now like to hire a postdoc/researcher to use the climate logger data to advance insights into how the microclimate in shade coffee farms varies across time and space in the study region. In addition, regional and large-scale climate data from other observational sources, atmospheric re-analysis products and climate models will be used to assess how local climate conditions may change in the future. Finally, it will be investigated how such predicted changes in climate may affect coffee yield and diseases.
Please spread the word if you know anyone who may be interested, and feel free email any questions to ayco.tack@su.se
More details can be found here:
All the best,
Ayco Tack, Erik Kjellström & Kristoffer Hylander
