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PhD course

Linking Hydrology and Greenhouse Gases in Environmental Models

24-28 March 2025

Objective

The course’s objective is to understand how hydrology impacts biogeochemical processes in different ecosystems, and how these processes can be represented in environmental models at different scales.

Course description

The course will gather experts in modelling of different ecosystems (agricultural systems, wetlands, forests) and at different scales (site scale, catchment scale, global scale). With a combination of lectures, student presentations on students’ individual PhD projects, discussion groups, group exercises and plenary discussions, we will compare and contrast the different approaches and will obtain a broad understanding of how these interactions are represented in models, how these interactions can be scaled to large scales, and how these can be used in accounting of greenhouse gas balances.

Teachers

Benjamin Stocker, University of Bern, CH
Bäerbel Tiemeyer, Thünen Institute, DE
David Kraus, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, DE
Edwin Haas, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, DE
Guy Schurgers, University of Copenhagen, IGN, DK
Julian Koch, GEUS, DK
Lars Stoumann Jensen, University of Copenhagen, PLEN, DK
Martin Rudbeck Jepsen, University of Copenhagen, IGN, DK
Nitin Chaudhary, Lund University, SE
Simon Stisen, GEUS, DK

Registration

1. Send biosketch (max 1,000 char) and PhD project description (max 1,000 char) to Tania Nielsen tn@ign.ku.dk. Deadline November 1.
2. Notice for acceptance and invitation to registration November 15.
3. Upon notice of acceptance, fill out the 'Apply' information on the website.

More information

Course fee: 1500 DKK (approx. EUR 200). Payment information will be sent after acceptance. Course fee covers participation in the course and coffee/tea and lunch during the five course days. Participants cover their own travel and accommodation expenses.

Tentative program

Monday 24 March
Introduction to course, impact of hydrology on biogeochemical processes. Short pitches by students and teachers
Tuesday 25 March
Modelling plot-scale hydrology and biogeochemistry.
Wednesday 26 March
Modelling catchment-scale hydrology, linking catchment-scale hydrology to greenhouse gas emissions.
Thursday 27 March
Global-scale modelling of vegetation processes and hydrology, representing landscape hydrology in Earth system models.
Friday 28 March
Greenhouse gas accounting and reporting of nationally determined contributions. Course wrap-up.

Learning outcomes

Knowledge:

Role of hydrological processes on plant and soil greenhouse gas exchange
Representation of hydrological processes in 1-dimensional and 3-dimensional models at different scales
Representation of biogeochemical processes in models at different scales

Skills:

Describing feedbacks between hydrology and ecosystem processes
Competences:

Ability to describe dependencies between hydrological processes and greenhouse gas exchange in quantitative relationships

Critical assessment of the dependencies used to describe hydrology and biogeochemistry in models at different scales and of the uncertainties and limitations related to this

Course responsibles

Guy Schurgers gusc@ign.ku.dk
Simon Stisen

For practical questions, please contact Tania Nielsen tn@ign.ku.dk

Positions

Current positions available in the Global Wetland Center:

PhD in Machine Learning for Environmental Sciences
(Department of Computer Science)

This project focuses on developing advanced machine learning methods to model greenhouse gas fluxes from multimodal remote sensing and in situ data. The work includes hybrid modelling combining process-based models and deep learning, as well as self-supervised learning, contributing to new global scale datasets.

Supervisor is ELLIS fellow Prof. Christian Igel, igel@di.ku.dk, DIKU. Co-supervisor is Assistant Prof. Nico Lang, nila@di.ku.dk, from DIKU.

Apply here: https://candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationInit.aspx/?cid=3010&departmentId=19976&ProjectId=158597&MediaId=4917&SkipAdvertisement=false

Application deadline: 6 April 2026

PhD on Methane & VOC Emissions from Paddy Rice Soils
(Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management)

This project is a collaboration between Global Wetland Center (GWC) and Aerial sensing of cropland VOC emissions (ACROVOC) and investigates greenhouse gas and VOC emissions from rice paddies, based on chamber measurements, and aerial measurements using drones. The PhD student will be responsible for the field manipulation experiments in Vietnam and subsequent analysis of the observations.

Supervisors are Prof. Bo Elberling, be@ign.ku.dk, IGN and Associate Prof. Andreas Westergaard-Nielsen, awn@ign.ku.dk, IGN.

Apply here: https://candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationInit.aspx/?cid=3010&departmentId=19979&ProjectId=158369&MediaId=4917&SkipAdvertisement=false