Earth Science: Vegetation and Soil Sciences

About the role

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA’s missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology.

Description

This opportunity is closed to applicants who are Senior Fellows (5-years or more past PhD).

The development and use of space-based remote-sensing instruments provides a unique vantage point from which to characterize the physical and biological properties of the Earth's surface and their time-dependent behavior. Decades of observations from space-based systems also capture the imprint of human activity and climate change, including feedbacks from land use and land cover change on the Earth system. The Biospheric Sciences Laboratory is a leader in the development and use of ground-based, airborne, and satellite instruments to measure, monitor, map, and model surface phenomena. Priority areas of research include the analysis of global-scale ecological processes, particularly as they relate to the influence of climate change and anthropogenic activity; terrestrial carbon cycle; fires, hurricanes, and other large-scale disturbance processes; regional-scale forest ecosystem dynamics in boreal, temperate, and tropical forest ecosystems; and 3-D modeling of light scattering and absorption within the vegetation profile to support the improvement of terrestrial ecosystem for coupling with GCMs.

Field of Science

Earth Science

Advisors

• Lahouari Bounoua
  Lahouari.Bounoua@nasa.gov
  301-614-6631
• Bruce Cook
  Bruce.Cook@nasa.gov
  301-614-6689
• Douglas Morton
  Douglas.Morton@nasa.gov
  301-614-6688
• Christopher S. Rudasill-Neigh
  christopher.s.neigh@nasa.gov
  (301) 614-6681

Location

Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland

Eligibility

• U.S. Citizens;
• U.S. Lawful Permanent Residents (LPR);
• Foreign Nationals eligible for an Exchange Visitor J-1 visa status; and,
• Applicants for LPR, asylees, or refugees in the U.S. at the time of application with 1) a valid EAD card and 2) I-485 or I-589 forms in pending status

Application Requirements

• Research proposal
• Three letters of recommendation
• Official doctoral transcript documents

Contact Information

Questions about this opportunity? Please email npp@orau.org

Application Instructions

A complete application to the NASA Postdoctoral Program includes:

• Research proposal
• Three letters of recommendation
• Official doctoral transcript documents