Supervisor: Stephan Glatzel (Department of Geography and Regional Research) 

Funding Situation:  supervisor has secured funding

Project outline: The PhD position is embedded in the cooperative project PeatGov Austria, which aims to evaluate alternative options for peatland management in Austria, to assess the potential for emission reduction and to identify the most effective governance approaches and policies to support a transformation and adaption towards climate-smart agriculture on peatlands.

The objectives of the PhD project are as follows:

• Generation of regional maps of organic soil cover considering all available sources including a measure of accuracy.
• Assessment of emission factors and emission reduction potentials of organic soil land use systems and realistic potentials for mitigating GHG emissions by climate smart agriculture in Austria.
• Derivation of the regional potential for avoiding GHG emissions by alternative policies and land management options in different Austrian contexts (e.g. typical organic agricultural soils and intact peatlands, farm types).