The Regional Secretariat for Science, Technology and Infrastructures (SRCTE) has opened an application to award three individual post-doctorate fellowships with the aim of including doctorates in Azorean R&D units.
National and foreign citizens may apply to the fellowship programme until October 15, 2011. The R&D projects to be submitted must be developed under the themes “Consequences of the changes in soil use in the local arthropod fauna,” “Geochemical flows in water bodies on São Miguel Island” and “Computable General Equilibrium Model of the Azores Economy.”
This programme is addressed at all those who hold a PhD in Biodiversity & Conservation, Insect Ecology, Animal Ecology, Landscape Ecology, Geology/ Hydrogeology, Economics and Management.
The project “Consequences of the changes in soil use in the local arthropod fauna” aims to study the impact of the changes in soil use in the diversity of arthropods as well as to find the taxonomic groups that indicate the diversity of populations. It also intends to adjust the impact of the changes in soil use in functional diversity and quantify the services of arthropod ecosystems in different soil uses.
In turn, the project “Geochemical flows in water bodies on São Miguel Island” is intended to characterise underground and surface water flows in the areas selected for this study, identify the elementary and volatile flows in underground and surface water flows, calculate the mass transported by chemical alteration to the ocean, calculate the amount of CO2 consumed on São Miguel through changes of volcanic rocks and water transport to the ocean, and define a conceptual model that allows to extrapolate the results achieved on São Miguel to the remaining islands.
The project “Computable General Equilibrium Model of the Azores Economy” aims to enhance the development of methodologies to analyse economic, social and environmental policies, develop new works in this field, expand the social accounting matrix in order to include the characterisation of the Azores natural resources and the impact of production and consumption on the environment, and create a general equilibrium model for Portugal, similar to the one developed for the Azores.
The works will be developed in the Azores Biodiversity Group at the Volcanology and Geological Risk Assessment Centre and at the Applied Economics Study Centre of the University of the Azores. Applications should be submitted to the Regional Directorate for Science, Technology and Communications at: http://www.azores.gov.pt/Gra/sctr.