Lancaster Environment Centre PhD and MSc-R Study

Lancaster Environment Centre

Lancaster University

The future’s in your hands

At the heart of The Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC) (http://www.lec.lancs.ac.uk/postgraduate/) is a fundamental commitment to ensure that our research and teaching is driven to deliver academic excellence and real world impact.

LEC has established clear areas of research to address some of the most pressing issues of the 21st century. Our inter-disciplinary research themes focus on atmospheric science, biodiversity and global change, catchment and aquatic processes, environmental geosciences and the relationships between the environment and society. This provides a strong research-based environment for the provision of training and education programmes at postgraduate level creating a vibrant environment for postgraduate students.

Postgraduate students are taught by and work with world-class scientists in a wide range of environmentally related disciplines, thereby enhancing your future employment prospects in the environment sector and beyond. Joining LEC will expand your understanding of the key areas of the environment and will provide you with the relevant skills required for a successful career.

Research Programmes

Research projects leading to the award of a PhD or Masters by Research are available in all areas of the biological, geographical and environmental sciences within the Lancaster Environment Centre. Masters by Research can be studied one-year full-time or two-years part-time and PhDs over three-years full time and four-five years part time. Research programmes allow students to focus on a specific area of interest whilst also undergoing appropriate research training. Research within LEC is organised into five inter-disciplinary research themes. Within each theme there are many specialist research groups. These are headed by permanent staff and usually supported by post doctoral research associates and technicians. Students become an integral part of these teams and benefit from the intellectual and laboratory support. Each research student is allocated a supervisory team who will support you through your studies and meet with their supervisors regularly to discuss research progress and identify any gaps in skills. You’ll be part of the vibrant research environment, contributing directly to the research achievements of LEC.

The following are a few examples of projects undertaken by our students.
• Interleaving and acceptability: Using community-scale examples to influence wider energy practices. Funding: UK Energy research Centre
• More 'crop per drop': Aerial remote sensing for precision irrigation management in UK potato production. Funding: Perry Foundation
• Investigating the potential for ecosystem restoration to create stable ecosystems which deliver effective carbon sequestration. Funding: Faculty Studentship
• Plant-soil microbial interactions and ecosystem service provision in mountain grasslands. Funding: NERC
• Effective Modelling Framework for Environmental and Risk Management of Nanotechnologies. Funding; EPSRC CASE (The Reach Centre)
• Designing an integrative aquatic monitoring system. Funding: NERC/ESRC Biogeochemical processes to mitigate diffuse water pollution transport from agricultural soils. Funding: DEFRA
• How natural and anthropogenic disturbances perturb inter-species relationships in tropical forest communities. Funding: University Studentship
• The impact of land use changes on the transmission of enteropathogens between farmland birds and livestock. Funding: BBSRC
• Environmental change and crop production. Funding: China Scholarship Council and The Lancaster Environment Centre.
• Bioremediation of contaminated Land. Funding: British Commonwealth Scholarship

Industry-linked projects

PhD projects are often in collaboration with Industry and can receive CASE support which provides the student with extra funding, at least £1000 per year for the first three years. The CASE scheme promotes partnerships between eligible research organisations and public or private sector organisations. During the PhD studentship the student enhances their training by spending between 3 and 18 months with the co-operating body in a workplace outside the academic environment. Recent CASE partners include: The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute, PI Bioscience Ltd, The Reach Centre, and Stopford Projects Ltd.

Research Themes and Centres

We conduct fundamental and applied environmental research, across the Earth system, biological and social sciences.

A driving aim behind LEC is to assemble and optimise cross-disciplinary research teams, to address 21st century environmental challenges, especially those related to environmental change, sustainable (water, energy) resource and chemical management, biodiversity and ecosystem function, and sustainable agriculture.

Research within LEC is organised into five inter-disciplinary research themes (see below) and five research centres which provide co-ordination and leadership of ‘outward-facing’ activities increasing our ‘science-to-user’ and ‘policy’ interfaces. These are:
•Centre for Chemicals Management
•Centre for Energy Lancaster
•Centre for Environmental Informatics
•Centre for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security
•Centre for Sustainable Water Management

Atmospheric Science
Theme Leader: Dr Andrew Jarvis
The atmospheric science research theme in the Lancaster Environment Centre focuses on: how the biosphere and the atmosphere interact with respect to atmospheric composition, chemistry and climate; stratospheric ozone; air quality; hydrometeorology; and carbon cycle dynamics.

We have research expertise in atmospheric measurements (include remote sensing) and the modelling of atmospheric processes from local to global scales. We aspire to conduct our work in an Earth system or a “sustainable atmosphere” framework.

Biodiversity and Global Change
Theme Leader: Professor Richard Bardgett
Two of the most urgent environmental issues facing mankind are global change and the accelerating loss of biological diversity. These issues raise many challenges for scientists, conservationists, land managers and policy makers. For instance, there is a pressing need to understand how biodiversity influences ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration, nutrient and water cycling, crop pollination and pest regulation, and how ecosystems might be managed to protect and enhance biodiversity under global change. Moreover, farmers are under increasing pressure to meet human needs for food production, whilst also minimizing environmental impacts and delivering non-market ecosystem services, including biodiversity conservation.

Our research tackles these issues from a range of ecological, evolutionary and social perspectives. Studies range from those on the evolutionary ecology of interactions between hosts and their parasites, to studies on the consequences of major land use shifts for biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and human welfare. Much of our research is interdisciplinary, including studies on the interactions of social and ecological constituents of the Earth-system.

Catchment and Aquatic Processes
Theme Leader: Professor Phil Haygarth
The Catchment and Aquatic Processes Research theme (CAP) carries out world-class fundamental and interdisciplinary research which furthers our understanding of soil and aquatic processes from headwaters to coastal seas. We want to use this understanding to help make informed decisions about catchment management and environmental policy.

The multidisciplinary group includes specialists in aquatic chemistry; biogeochemical cycling; ecohydrology; hydraulics and hydrodynamics; geochemistry; modelling; risk and uncertainty estimation; geophysical investigations of flow processes; soil science; land management and diffuse pollution; and microbiology.
Particular strengths of this research group include innovation in the development of new measurement tools for biogeochemical dynamics and environmental informatics: a new emerging area which brings information and communication technology (ICT) and environmental sciences together, enabling us to study the environment in new ways.

Environmental Geosciences
Theme Leader: Dr Steve Lane
The Earth and its human population face key challenges through the need to adapt to climate change and from the threats faced by natural hazards. Underlying rates of change, the frequency of catastrophic events and the range of natural variability are central to these issues. Understanding these long term environmental changes and the interaction of the geosphere with surface processes are the main goals of this theme.

Key areas of research include: long term climate change, volcanology and glacio-volcanism, tectonic and geological processes, environmental magnetism, remote sensing and geoinformatics, planetary science, stable isotopes and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. Whilst specific aims are to mitigate natural hazards through understanding the fundamental physicochemical processes involved and to develop quantitative methods for characterising and monitoring geological environments and for palaeoclimate reconstruction.

Lancaster hosts the UK's largest glacio-volcanism research team and is at the forefront of the interpretation of volcano-seismic signals through sample analysis and laboratory simulation. The Centre of Magnetism and Palaeomagnetism focuses on environmental magnetism for a number of novel applications, including elucidating palaeoclimates and geochronology through the analysis of sediments, rocks and soils, particularly in the context of understanding past climates and resolving potential future changes.

Society and Environment
Theme Leader: Professor Gordon Walker
The Society and Environment research theme is focused on the interdisciplinary investigation and critical analysis of contemporary social and environmental challenges.

The work of the group is shaped by theoretical interests in knowledge, expertise and governance; in space, scale, time and socio-spatial relations; and in everyday practice, resilience and systemic socio-technical change.

These concepts are explored through empirical research that seeks to contribute to the cross cutting societal goals of sustainable development, social justice and environmental justice.

We undertake our research on contemporary social and environmental challenges in a diversity of global regions including Africa (Kenya, Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa), Southern, Central and North America (Peru, Guatemala, Trinidad and Canada) and in various parts of Britain and Continental Europe

Funding

Applicants are welcome to propose their own projects or apply to funded or self funded opportunities.

Several funded PhD Studentships are available throughout the year. Full studentship (fees and maintenance grant) are available to UK and EU candidates who have been ordinarily resident in the UK throughout the 3-year period immediately preceding the date of an award. EU candidates who have not been ordinarily resident in the UK for the last 3 years are eligible for "tuition fees-only" awards (no maintenance grant). International applicants are not eligible for funded PhD’s unless stated.

We are able to provide admin and supervisor support to self funding applicants in pursuit of funding from other funding bodies. Recent self funding applicants have received funding from the Perry Foundation, British Commonwealth Scholarship and China Scholarship Council.

For further information on funded and self funded opportunities please see: http://www.lec.lancs.ac.uk/postgraduate/phd.php

Open Days

We hold Open Days throughout the year where you have the chance to discuss your options further with academics and support staff. We look forward to meeting you.

A typical open day provides you with the chance to
• discuss the course with members of academic staff
• find out about potential funding routes
• tour the University campus, including the Graduate College
• visit some of the facilities in the Lancaster Environment Centre, including dedicated Masters study rooms

Applicants attending our open days find them a very valuable experience and we encourage you to attend:
http://www.lec.lancs.ac.uk/postgraduate/open_days/