Applicants are invited for two Post-Doctoral Fellows to undertake field, modelling and conceptual research to advance our understanding and numerical description of physical hydrological processes that operate in cold regions.  The PDFs will be supervised by Professor John Pomeroy at the USask Coldwater Laboratory, Canmore, Alberta, and near to the spectacular and well instrumented Canadian Rockies Hydrological Observatory.   The Coldwater Lab is a group of scientists, students, modellers and field technicians studying the hydrology of high mountain and downstream environments around the world as part of the Canada Research Chair in Water Resources and Climate Change, the UNESCO Chair in Mountain Water Sustainability, as part of studies supported by the Global Water Futures programme, Alberta Innovates and NOAA’s CIROH.

PDF1 will undertake research on mountain snow and glacier hydrological processes in sub-alpine forested basins of the Canadian Rocky Mountains.  This will take advantage of the instrumented sites in the Canadian Rockies Hydrological Observatory, drone-based LiDAR remote sensing, hydrological models set up with CRHM, CHM and MESH in the Bow River Basin, high resolution atmospheric models and other information.  The overall goal is to further develop process algorithms to improve model realisations in the region in order to improve predictions of future water supply availability under climate change.   Specific objectives are to better understand the snow distribution and melt processes governing runoff generation; and the impacts of land cover change on snow processes, water storage and transmission.

PDF2 will undertake research to improve the representation of physical processes to improve the extent that model simulations mimic our conceptual understanding of dominant processes across different environments. In some cases, this entails coupling process components that have hitherto been neglected in large-domain models (e.g., glacier hydrology, snow redistribution, connectivity of wetlands, land-atmosphere interactions over sparse forests, tile drainage, etc.); in other cases, this entails further development of process algorithms to improve their applicability across a wide range of environments.

Please click the links above (PDF1 and PDF2) to go to the job postings for application details. The deadline to apply is October 30, 2023.