Stipend: This post will fully cover university tuition and provide a tax-free stipend over a 4 year duration for UK students of £14,057 per year

Start Date: 1st October 2015 (contract duration 3.5 years)

Project summary

Public water supply reservoirs and the rivers downstream are classed as ‘heavily modified’ under the Water Framework Directive (WFD). The WFD objective for these water bodies is to reach good ecological potential (GEP) by 2021. Currently the classification of water bodies is supported by limited hydrological and biological data. The lack of empirical information prevents the Environment Agency and United Utilities from understanding whether the water bodies are achieving their objectives or what the nature and scale of the ‘gap’ to good ecological potential are.

Without better understanding, United Utilities is unable to progress appraisal of potential appropriate mitigation measures, such as alterations to the flow regime, which could be implemented to bring water bodies to GEP if they are cost-beneficial, as well as technically and practically feasible.

This project will gather robust scientific evidence to define the sensitivity of different ecological indicators to hydrologic and hydraulic conditions over different scales. This PhD would add to the body of knowledge related to environmental flows and river flow for good ecological potential.

It is anticipated that the project will involve the collection of hydrological, hydraulic and biological/ecological datasets pre and post the implementation of change flow alterations and selected study sites. This will involve the planning and undertaking of field experiments alongside appropriate data interpretation and analysis as well as modelling of flows and habitat.

The STREAM IDC

The STREAM Industrial Doctorate Centre (IDC) programme is delivered by five

of the major academic centres of excellence in water science and engineering in the UK. For further information, visit the STREAM web site at: www.stream-idc.net/index.php.

The project will be supervised by Dr James Shucksmith alongside other members of academic staff at the University of Sheffield in collaboration with partners from United Utilities. The candidate will be a member of the Pennine Water Group team: www.shef.ac.uk/penninewatergroup

Eligibility Criteria

To receive funding applicants must be eligible to work in the UK with no restrictions.

The ideal applicant for this position must have;

• A good honours (2:1 or above) degree in Engineering, Hydrology, Aquatic Ecology or another relevant Physical Science
• Relevant experience to perform mathematical and analytical tasks at a very competent level
• Good interpersonal, presentation and management skills
• Effective communication and excellent IT skills
• An ability to travel between the partner institutions

In addition, desirable candidate criteria are;

• An understanding of the water sector
• Skills and experience with direct technical relevance to the proposed research project (e.g. in hydraulics, hydrology, ecology, or experience in conducting fieldwork).
• Experience with relevant software tools for data analysis (e.g. MATLAB)   

For further information on the project please visit the ‘Opportunities’page of the Pennine Water Group web site: www.shef.ac.uk/penninewatergroup/opps 

How to apply

Interested candidates should email a covering letter and their Curriculum

Vitae to Miss Lindsay Hopcroft (l.hopcroft<στο>sheffield.ac.uk).

For informal enquiries please contact: Dr. James Shucksmith (j.shucksmith<στο>sheffield.ac.uk).