Expressions of interest are invited for a PhD scholarship position at Monash University’s Department of Civil Engineering (Water Group) and School of Chemistry. This project is jointly funded by the Australian Research Council, West Gippsland Catchment Management Authority and the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning.

About the project:

Are you interested in pushing the boundaries of knowledge? Are you keen to solve a global challenge? Do you want to work with an enthusiastic and friendly team of students, academics and practitioners?

It is critical to secure a sustainable future for agriculture in Australia. We need to find a way to identify how we can have a vibrant agricultural sector whilst protecting our waterways from the pollutants in agricultural runoff. This projects aims to better understand and model how land use, land management and climate change in agricultural catchments will impact waterways.

This is a multi-disciplinary project with collaborations between environmental chemists, microbiologists, earth scientists as well as between academics (from both Monash University and the University of Melbourne) and catchment managers from the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning and the West Gippsland Catchment Management Authority.

What you will do as part of this PhD:

• Conduct field work and plot-scale studies to understand the sources of nutrients in agricultural catchments, and to quantify the performance of on-farm conservation measures in improving water quality;
• Model the impacts of land use, land management, conservation practice implementation and climate change on nutrient export from farms;
• Work collaboratively with landholders and catchment managers.

This project would suit someone who likes getting out into the field, engaging with landholders and catchment managers, but is also interested in modelling and statistics.

Funding:

Successful applicants will be supported by a tax-exempt scholarship from Monash University ($29,500 p.a., indexed annually), and tuition fees will be offset for up to 3.5 years.

A top-up scholarship ($5,000 p.a) may be granted to exceptional candidates.

Due to COVID-19 related travel restrictions, this opportunity is only available to students who are currently in Australia and New Zealand.