The Water Resources Unit carries out research to support mainstreaming of ecosystem services into policies protecting water environments. This involves quantification and mapping of ecosystem services so that they can be used in policy impact assessments and scenario analyses.
The project aims at mapping ecosystem services for European aquatic ecosystems, including river, wetlands, coastal areas and regional seas, e.g. water provision, coastal protection, biological regulation, recreation opportunities offered by water ecosystems to people.
The successful candidate will work on ecological modelling and forecasting to develop spatially explicit GIS based ecosystem service maps accounting for production rate in biophysical units per unit area per unit time of regulating, provisioning, cultural and supporting ecosystem services. This requires using available socio-economic, biophysical, climatic and ecological data to estimate ecosystem services production functions and associated benefits.
Further information here.