Estuaries around the world, including in the Netherlands, have been heavily altered by human engineering such as dams and dikes. These interventions have sharply separated saline and freshwater zones, disrupting natural tidal and salinity gradients. As a result, unique ecosystems like tidal wetlands and floodplain forests—once sustained by dynamic interactions between tides and shifting salinity—have been greatly reduced. This ecological loss not only affects biodiversity, but also weakens the natural resilience of estuarine landscapes, making them more vulnerable to climate-related stresses such as sea-level rise and saltwater intrusion.
This project investigates how habitat-forming wetland and floodplain-forest plants modify their habitat and shape their landscape, thereby contributing to plant diversity and ecosystem resilience. By combining modelling and field studies at both large estuary and small wetland scales, we aim to understand how habitat modification allow species to survive in a tidal and episodically salt environment, to help restore and maintain high-diversity flood forest habitats that are resilient to the direct and indirect effects of climate change. The project will focus on the tidal flood forest of the Biesbosch (strongly degraded) and the Oude Maas (more natural conditions), and the de-embankments along the wooded parts of the Rhine-Meuse estuary.
In this PhD position, you will build ecosystem models to study how the formation of tidal creeks influences tidal wetland conditions, affecting species growth and diversity, and confront the model with an empirical study of habitat development in the Biesbosch and/or the Oude Maas. You will study how historical changes along the Rhine-Meuse estuary, from a semi-natural inland-delta to a strongly constrained current-day “grienden”-wetlands, affected estuarine conditions (tidal and salt gradients) and landscape development. You will use the models to help restore endangered flood forest habitats along the Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt estuaries.
More information: NIOZ website
Application deadline: 30 June 2025
