Jürgen Knauer

#PlantSciJobs

🚨Two fully funded PhD opportunities in Australia!

Improving C4 photosynthesis in vegetation models.
Supervised by Dani Way (ANU, Canberra) and myself (UTS, Sydney).

1. Lab- and field-based project at ANU – see flyer below

2. Modelling project at UTS – www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Two PhD opportunities at the Australian National University and the University of Technology Sydney, working on thermal responses and thermal acclimation of C4 photosynthesis. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Vegetation biogeography is a main source of uncertainty in modelling the land carbon cycle!

PhD Opportunity in Plant Ecophysiology – Adelaide University We are looking for an PhD candidate to join an exciting research project focused on understanding heat and drought combined impacts on threatened plants’ mortality. Key Objectives: Describe drought sensitivity in juvenile and mature individuals of threatened plant species. Disentangle the effects of elevated temperature, soil dryness, and atmospheric water demand on the sensitivity of threatened species to hotter droughts. Model threatened species’ risk of mortality under current and future hotter droughts. Eligibility: Australians and international applicants with a completed Master's degree (GPA > 5.0) and/or a completed 4-year Bachelor with Honours (GPA > 5.0) in Plant Biology or related areas; Proof of English proficiency (e.g. IELTS score > 6.5 or equivalent qualification), only for applicants who speak English as a second language. Strong analytical and programming skills in R or Python. Genuine interest in studying plants with previous experience in plant ecology and/or physiology. Effective writing skills; a passion for reading, writing, and continually improving as a communicator. Ability to drive in Australia is desirable but not essential. Start Date: April 2026 (negotiable) Duration: 3.5 years Benefits: PhD scholarship (tax-exempt stipend of $36,500 AUD p.a. + $3,000 AUD p.a. top up); Higher stipend rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander candidates ($ 53,608 p.a.); Relocation allowances for both domestic and international candidates; Single Overseas Student Health cover for international applicants. 100% tuition fee waiver. How to Apply: Email the following documents to ilaine.matos@adelaide.edu.au before the 15th of February 2026. Women and people underrepresented in research are encouraged to apply. 1-page cover letter explaining why you are interested in this position and your previous experiences relevant for this opportunity. Curriculum Vitae in the Adelaide University format.

✨ PhD opportunity studying drought and heatwave effects on threatened plants ✨🔥

Funded by an ARC DECRA awarded to the amazing Dr Ilaíne Matos and co-supervised by Dr Sami Rifai and me!

Limited by the character limit here, so please see the attached flyer for all the details - please share widely!

William Bond, defender of grasslands In recent years, one of the loudest ideas in environmental policy has been that trees are the planet’s universal remedy. Plant enough of them, in enough places, and carbon will be soaked up, water wil...

"Bond’s work leaves behind an inconvenient lesson for an era of climate urgency: that speed is not a substitute for understanding, and that good intentions, applied without care, can erase ancient worlds as efficiently as neglect." A beautiful tribute to William Bond. Forever missed by many.

Hydrogen emissions are ‘supercharging’ the warming impact of methane - Carbon Brief The warming impact of hydrogen has been “overlooked” in projections of climate change, authors of the latest “global hydrogen budget” say.

The Global Carbon Project has just published the most comprehensive Global Hydrogen Budget to date.

H2, although not a GHG, has an indirect Global Warming Potential 37 times more potent than CO2.

Carbon Brief:
www.carbonbrief.org/hydrogen-emi...

Research paper:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Simulated and observed annual mature forest turnover time and woody biomass increment flux at a boreal, temperate and tropical site.

#Demography, dynamics and data: building confidence for simulating changes in the world's forests

📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
by Eckes-Shephard et al.

@WIleyPlantSci #PlantScience

Just published, a land-mark paper by Annemarie Eckes-Shephard et al.! It assesses the performance of a new generation of Demography-enabled Dynamic Global Vegetation (D-DGVMs), that attempt to simulate the changing size and age structure of trees in forests.

I found an obituary for Steve

www.renner-wikoffchapel.com/obituary/Ste...

Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Forest Monitoring Company Description: Western Sydney University is a modern, forward-thinking, research-led institution at the heart of Australia’s fastest-growing and most economically significant region. With 11 cam...

Postdoctoral position in Forest Monitoring available. Know your way around spatial datasets? Join us to help monitor changes in Australia's precious forest estate! @westsyduhie.bsky.social
jobs.smartrecruiters.com/WesternSydne...

Our global meta-analysis is finally out - we explore the most important influencer on C4 photosynthetic capacity using ~1700 C4 Aci curves! Data are freely available for the community.

PhD opportunity available at @westsyduhie.bsky.social with the brillant Dr Laura Williams - hyperspectral data and process-based modelling of tree diversity 🌳🌲 please share with your networks tinyurl.com/ms6mjz8y

Limited carbon sequestration potential from global ecosystem restoration - Nature Geoscience The maximum carbon sequestration potential from global terrestrial ecosystem restoration efforts until 2100 is 96.9 Gt, which is equivalent to 3.7–12.0% of anthropogenic emissions until then, accordin...

Limited carbon sequestration potential from global ecosystem restoration - our paper was born of collective frustration around continual conflation of restoration + reforestation, invariably misrepresenting open ecosystems in global models of ecosystem C storage potential.

What a pleasure to write a News & Views piece on this intriguing article that found surprising insights into WUE trends --> www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Deforestation Increases Vegetation Vulnerability to Drought Across Biomes Satellite observations show that drought impacts on biomass are more severe when forests are converted to non-forests Dynamic global vegetation models generally agree on a more negative drought s...

(1/3) I'm thrilled to announce the publication of our new paper on the impacts of land use and land cover changes on ecosystem sensitivity to drought and temperature fluctuations! 🌍🌳 Check it out here: dx.doi.org/10.1029/2024....
📊 #LandCoverChange #Deforestation #Drought #EcosystemStability

A post-processed carbon flux dataset for 34 eddy covariance flux sites across the Heihe River basin, China Abstract. The eddy covariance (EC) technique is currently the most widely used method for measuring carbon exchange between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere at the ecosystem scale. Using this...

A gap-filled and partitioned eddy covariance flux dataset for 34 sites across Northwest China is now publicly available online. Our data paper, led by Xufeng Wang, just came out in Earth System Science Data.
essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/...

Nice! Would be good to compare with our grazing implementation in LPJ-GUESS at some point (which is still in its infancy).

California annual grass phenology and allometry influence ecosystem dynamics and fire regime in a vegetation demography model Grass-dominated ecosystems cover wide areas of the land surface yet have received far less attention from the Earth System Model (ESM) community. This limits model projections of ecosystem dynamics .....

Newly calibrated grass behaviour in the #FATESmodel :) nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Some physiological processes that can be neglected when measuring gas exchange in happy plants become important when dealing with stressed plants. In this paper we outline the things that might cause trouble under suboptimal conditions.

Shout out to the new journal @plantecophys.bsky.social !

Greenwashing and denial won’t solve beef’s enormous climate problems I’ll admit it: I like beef. Like many Americans, I was brought up to believe that beef was a central part of a traditional family meal. My mom made it. My kids ate it. Marketing campaigns told me it w...

Beef has a climate problem. Facing it requires we look beyond greenwashing and focus on hard truths.

drawdown.org/insights/gre...

Boreal forests are heading for an open state | PNAS The boreal forest biome is warming four times faster than the global average. Changes so far are moderate, but time lags in responses may transient...

Boreal forests are heading for an open state | PNAS

On the predictability of turbulent fluxes from land: PLUMBER2 MIP experimental description and preliminary results Abstract. Accurate representation of the turbulent exchange of carbon, water, and heat between the land surface and the atmosphere is critical for modelling global energy, water, and carbon cycles in ...

🚨 New paper led by Gab #nosocialmedia Abramowitz: On the predictability of turbulent fluxes from land: PLUMBER2 MIP experimental description and preliminary results bg.copernicus.org/articles/21/...

Congratulations to Dr Jürgen Knauer for winning this year's @ecolsocaus.bsky.social ARDC Award for New Developers of Software! Read our interview with Jürgen about his winning software and research: ardc.edu.au/article/shap... #ESAus2024

What a nice surprise and recognition from Western Sydney University while overseas!

What an honour to receive this year's open source software award! Thanks to @ardc.bsky.social for sponsoring and thanks to @bmedlyn.bsky.social for jumping in to present at #ESAus2024

please add me :)

thanks! No I didn't know I'm an atmospheric scientist until I saw this ;)

Honoured to have been named Australia's leading researcher in Atmospheric Sciences by the Australian. Read the interview here:
www.theaustralian.com.au/special-repo...

Higher global gross primary productivity under future climate with more advanced representations of ... Bringing the latest understanding of plant physiology into models suggests larger increases of future plant productivity.

🧪🌏🌾 New paper out! We show more realistic photosynthesis models predict higher CO2 uptake going into the future: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...