Earth Observation Specialist - Ecosystems Analysis Team

We are looking for an Earth Observation Specialist who can help us integrate EO into the practical management of the environment for biodiversity and ecosystem services.  JNCC is working on a range of projects in this field, with a wide variety of partners across the UK and its Overseas Territories. The person we are looking for will bring experience in application of imagery for environmental and land management change ideally with an interest in natural habitats and their ecosystem services.

JNCC has a significant role within the EO Centre of Excellence, which is a collaboration across Defra bodies, Scottish Govt and Welsh Government aiming to advance beneficial EO application and tackle the cross cutting resources needed to make this efficient.  You will have the opportunity to learn from and share approaches to using EO with colleagues in the centre working in other application areas, for example in forestry, water quality and rural payments. 

Work will include investigating where new technologies or scientific developments can help meet requirements such as creating a scientific evidence base for making effective policy decision e.g. agri-environment schemes, protected sites monitoring. This is often carried out in partnership with research institutes, NGOs and others.  You will be part of a team that has, over the last few years, worked on the development of methods for mapping the extent of habitats, establishing standardised processing of optical and SAR data for the UK, and production of standard metrics from imagery that will provide information to meet the needs of multiple applications.  More recently we have been starting to investigate how parameters derived from EO data can be integrated with habitat and species data collected across the UK for modelling pressures and identifying changes in habitat condition.

You will also contribute to projects internationally by providing expert advice on types of analyses and appropriate use of EO data. These include the UK’s Caribbean and South Atlantic Overseas Territories and in several South American countries where JNCC leads projects or is working with partners from industry or government.  These international projects focus on valuing and mapping ecosystem goods and services across terrestrial and shallow marine environments where EO analysis plays a key role.  Through this work, JNCC has an opportunity to promote the international use of EO based natural capital assessments at different scales (small islands and large continental areas) and different environments (low and high latitudes, terrestrial, coastal).

You will work with IT and data science colleagues to produce innovative ways of analysing the high volumes of data now available from the Copernicus Programme, using cloud-based systems.  This represents an exciting new opportunity to improve our knowledge of the environment and enable country conservation delivery bodies to be able to better meet their evidence needs in a cost-effective manner.

For a full job description with more detail on post duties and competencies required please visit our website www.jncc.defra.gov.uk/jobs where you can download the details and the relevant application form and find out more about our work.  Alternatively, contact us via recruitment@jncc.gov.uk and we will email the relevant documentation to you.

The closing date for this post is 09:00 on 04 February 2019

The anticipated interview date is 11 February 2019