PHD OPPORTUNITY in Remote Sensing, Community Science and Mobile Technology to address Biodiversity Loss

Unique PhD Opportunity at Northern Arizona University working in collaboration with the International Union for Conservation (IUCN), NASA, Conservation International (CI), and the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes at Arizona State University examining the interface of remote sensing for biodiversity conservation, community science, technology, and development.

Challenges and opportunities
A central challenge for conservation is the inequity between global conservation decision making and on-the-ground conservation practices and realities in local communities. This results in a disconnect between powerful urban-based conservation stakeholders in the global north and the rural people who live where conservation takes place, leading to further divides in an increasingly polarized and unequal global society.

Community science approaches that engage members of the public to participate in collecting data on biodiversity are increasing. Platforms and applications such as eBird and iNaturalist are taking off around the world; with uptake across low-, middle-, and high-income countries. Community science data integrated with global datasets enabled by advances in remote sensing enables ground-truthing of conservation outcomes.

The development of mobile and payment technologies can enable the development of mechanisms that allow private institutions and individuals to make direct financial contributions to individuals, rural communities and local biodiversity and conservation groups. Mechanisms for direct payments for on-ground conservation-related actions such as monitoring are still limited but their potential for enabling both social and conservation outcomes are tremendous, and we have embarked on an initiative to develop this further. As part of the team that is furthering this initiative, we seek a PhD student to focus on theoretical and conceptual development in this space.

Objectives of the PhD position
This PhD will focus on developing an approach to use local level data collection to provide verification and ground-truthing for global biodiversity and ecosystem datasets. Research objectives, questions and specific focus will be developed with the student but could include:

1.    Assess the value of community science data for verification of global biodiversity indicators and datasets including of satellite-based remote-sensing data
2.    Explore the extent to which community actions and science (e.g., payment for data collection, monitoring) can deliver individual community and social benefits, and
3.    How community science-based initiatives could result in reduced threats to biodiversity.

The PhD candidate will focus on developing theoretical advances in this space and will also pursue data collection for case studies that can apply and test how data collected by community scientists should be collected to robustly verify remotely-sensed data and global biodiversity datasets. Socio-economic issues such as how payment programs for the payment of data could be structured and governed need addressing. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to work with project partners to further develop these and other questions, for the PhD.

The successful candidate will work closely under the co-supervision of Associate Professor Duan Biggs at NAU and relevant project team members at NAU, ASU and elsewhere including Dr Patrick Jantz, Dr Christopher Doughty and Dr Pranay Ranjan as well as additional input from representatives of partner organizations such as Conservation International. The official thesis committee will depend on research focus. Relevant PhD coursework as stipulated by NAU will be required. The amount necessary depends on previous qualifications.

Contribution to Lab group, School, and University
The candidate will be expected to contribute to the activities and functioning of Dr Biggs’ Resilient Conservation applied research group (resilientconservation.org) at NAU and the Conservation Innovation Lab group at ASU. These labs are highly collaborative and interdisciplinary.
This PhD will be partly supported by a Teaching Assistantship, and the successful candidate will be expected to work as a Teaching Assistant during a part of their PhD.

Selection Criteria

Essential requirements

• A Masters, Honours, or equivalent undergraduate degree in a relevant field such as Conservation Science or Environmental Social Science, GIS, Remote Sensing, or Informatics.
• Knowledge and competence of conducting either mixed methods social science research; including quantitative and qualitative data collection and/or working with remotely- sensed data products and analysis and/or global biodiversity
• Knowledge and competence of conducting quantitative, and qualitative data analyses using packages such as R, and NVivo and/or Google Earth Engine programming. Willingness to spend the necessary time in the
• Strong writing skills in

The candidate will be registered at Northern Arizona University.

Additional Requirements (desirable)

• Experience working with the development and collection of data on mobile
• Second language skills beyond English, especially in Portuguese, Swahili, Spanish, or another regional
• Publication record in the peer-reviewed
• Fund-raising experience.

Stipend/Salary
The 12-month stipend for this PhD will be USD 32,962 over four years; subject to adequate progress. Tuition and medical benefits will be fully covered. Funding for this PhD is in place, but the successful candidate will be expected to apply for additional funding and grants (e.g., National Science Foundation, NASA, Explorers Club, National Geographic Early Career Grant, etc.).

Immigration support
International candidates are welcome to apply. NAU’s Centre for International Education can assist an international candidate with immigration visa procedures if selected.