The Aquaculture and Fisheries group at Wageningen University is looking for an enthusiastic candidate who is interested to advance science by evaluating river restoration measures in the River Meuse (the Netherlands), with the aim to establish the role of habitat quality and connectivity for more resilient and robust freshwater fish populations. Fish are an essential element in the ecological functioning of aquatic ecosystems and have species-specific habitat requirements to fulfil their life cycle. For this reason, fish is one of the biological quality elements of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) to assess the ecological status of rivers, lakes and estuaries. However, wide-scale habitat changes, caused by intensive human use of freshwaters, have diminished the ecological quality of water bodies.
Large rivers have been particularly affected by this. These rivers serve many purposes, such as inland water transport, requiring minimum depths and stable water levels, and have been modified accordingly, e.g. by the building of weirs, protecting banks and cutting of meanders. Protection against flooding of rivers, e.g. through the construction of dykes, led to a further reduction in the natural dynamics, and hence to decreased ecological quality. This led to specialised river fishes becoming rare or even locally extinct.
To improve the ecological quality of the Meuse River Rijkswaterstaat (the executive agency of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management) has realised and planned a large number of diverse river restoration projects. These projects serve to explore which type and extent of measures are most effective in improving ecological quality within the context of the Water Framework directive (WFD), and how such measures could be optimised.
Within this project the focus will be on the fish community, especially on species that prefer flowing waters (rheophilic species). One aim is to identify bottlenecks in the life cycle of these species, which requires monitoring of the occurrence of fishes in relation to habitat characteristics. Where possible a BACI (before-after-impact-control) approach will be applied.
Within this project, you will work as a PhD student on developing new knowledge on the interactions between connectivity, quality and quantity of habitats for rheophilic fishes using proven and newly developed techniques, such as fyke monitoring, acoustic telemetry and mapping habitat conditions.
Your duties and responsibilities include:
- perform fish monitoring and telemetry in collaboration with students, perform habitat assessments, and rigorously collect, store and process data;
- analysing this data critically, using advanced statistical techniques and with deep knowledge of the biological context.;
- collaborate with relevant stakeholders (in particular Rijkswaterstaat and regional water boards) to ensure relevance, enhance learning and enlarge data collection;
- lead a team of students/collaborators in the field.
You will work here Research training and education at PhD level at
Aquaculture and Fisheries group is integrated in the research program of the Graduate School ‘Wageningen Institute of Animal Sciences’ (WIAS), which aims to contribute to the sustainability of human-animal interactions through fundamental and strategic research. The aquaculture experts within AFI focus on fish nutrition and health in aquaculture production systems, while the fisheries and ecology experts study the ecology, biodiversity, and conservation of freshwater fishes, and population ecology and fisheries of marine fish species.