How many Wadden Islands will still exist in 2100? The answer to this question depends not only on sea-level rise scenarios, but also on our ability to design clever adaptation strategies that can prolong the lifetime of barrier islands such as the Wadden Islands. Many examples exist of successful coastal adaptation to sea-level rise, but it is not yet clear how these can be scaled up, and if there are physical limitations to their effectiveness, on a landscape scale.
Your job In this PhD project you will collect field data and use numerical models to assess possibilities of (and limits to) climate adaptation for the entire Wadden Sea coast and its islands. It is part of the new and exciting
WADWAD project: a tri-lateral consortium of Dutch, German, and Danish scientists and engineers that will develop an action plan for the Wadden Sea coastal area.
You, together with the rest of the UU team, will bring in expertise on coastal geomorphology and climate change adaptation. The rest of the project includes sedimentologists, biologists, economists, and social scientists that cover topics of coastal adaptation from the paleo record all the way to cost-benefit analyses and stakeholder acceptance.
To support academic and personal development, you will follow courses and you will assist in teaching Earth Sciences at Bachelor's and Master's level. Together these activities amount to twenty percent of the contracted time.