PhD Candidate: Freshwater Ecosystems – Impacts and Feedbacks

Freshwater ecosystems provide vital resources for humans, such as drinking water, water for irrigation and hydropower. At the same time, freshwater ecosystems are affected by a variety of pressures resulting from human activities, including water abstraction and diversion, pollution and climate change. These pressures affect freshwater biodiversity and may ultimately have repercussions also for human health, either directly (e.g. through consumption of polluted water) or indirectly (i.e. mediated by changes in freshwater biodiversity). In this PhD project we aim to understand and quantify human impacts on freshwater ecosystems as well as feedbacks to human health.
We will cover a selection of pathways from human pressures (for example, climate change, land use, emissions of pollutants) to changes in fresh water quantity and quality, freshwater habitats, biodiversity and human health effects. The project should result in quantitative, generalisable relationships that can be integrated into global hydrological and freshwater biodiversity models. As this is a joint research project between Radboud University and Deltares, you will work at both these institutes.