The Department of Physical Geography at Utrecht University and Deltares are seeking a PhD candidate for WadSED, a large project on the Wadden Sea tidal basins and the Western Scheldt estuary. We seek to understand these systems and predict their morphodynamics and long-term morphological development under influence of natural dynamics, human interference and sea-level rise. Morphological change involves fluxes of sediment that, integrated over time and space, are sediment budgets. Channel-shoal patterns arise and change as a result of these dynamics. The sediment budget, where the sediment comes from and goes to, and the timescale over which it is displaced, determine the short-term morphodynamics and the long-term morphological development. For better understanding and sustainable management, we need to track and trace the sediment.

Your main task will be to develop a new, objective method using our new technology to recognise patterns. Once we have subdivided the landscape into meaningful parts with coherent behavior, we can construct detailed sediment budgets of estuaries and tidal basins and determine sediment pathways from measurements and ongoing modelling. With this, we will gain understanding in systems functioning and effects of biota, extreme events, sea-level rise and human interference. Several ideas, methods and concepts for automated recognition of channels and bars are already available and are also developed by other researchers in our project. Your outcomes will be used by other PhD candidates, for example in model validation.

You will be based at Utrecht University and Deltares. At UU, you will be part of a vibrant PhD community and of the Physical Geography department with renown expertise in tidal systems. At Deltares, you will be member of the Applied Morphodynamics department, a team of about thirty experts, that undertakes a wide range of applied research and innovative, specialized consultancy projects in coastal environments related to coastal hazards and coastal defense, sediment management and coastal restoration, and long-term coastal evolution.

As WadSED project team we will collectively gain system understanding, have fun doing science, and be relevant in application. We collaborate with a professional attitude towards our work, our colleagues and partners and communicate in an open and constructive way. You will gain skills in science communication for interdisciplinary collaboration and for explaining your results to societal partners that intend to use the new knowledge. You will present your work at project meetings, for the societal partners, and at international scientific conferences. This PhD project includes courses for academic writing and presentation, responsible academic conduct and in-depth training and coaching for transdisciplinary communication and public science communication.

To support academic and personal development, PhD candidates follow courses and assist in teaching Earth Sciences at Bachelor's and Master's level. Together these activities amount to twenty percent of the contracted time.

For more information on the project and subprojects see WadSED. This vacancy concerns project WP1.2.