The University of Évora (Portugal) opens calls to award two Research Grants for a PhD student in the framework of the project “PyroC.pt: Advanced wildfire modelling for risk assessment and pyroconvection understanding in Portugal”
Grant 1: for a student with a Master’s degree in the field of agricultural, environmental or earth sciences to work on “Forest fuel mapping at high Resolution”, “Coupling SURFEX-Fuel Model” and “Seasonal wildfire risk assessment”, including the following tasks:
(i) Improvement of the characterization of forest fuel, participating in observation campaigns in the forest and using data from the Sentinel-2 satellite.(ii) Integration of a parameterization of forest fuel in the surface model platform, SURFEX, used by weather forecast models.(iii) Development of a system for a seasonal risk assessment of forest fires based on SURFEX simulations forced by numerical weather forecasts.
Grant 2: for a student with a Master’s degree on Earth and Atmospheric sciences or related areas, to work on Wildfire modelling and pyroconvection including the following tasks:
(i) Performing numerical simulations with the coupled Meso-NH – ForeFire model in order to reproduce the complex interaction between fire and atmosphere;(ii) Carry out simulations based on improved fuel models, seeking a better representation of forest fires and pyro-convection..(iii) Analyze the numerical results in order to obtain a better understanding of PyroCb clouds, which should be supported by remote sensing observations, namely from meteorological radar and lidar.
The positions are open from April 12 to April 23, 2021