Summary: Applications are invited for a fully-funded PhD in Forest Structural Assessment with the C-BioStock project, to be supervised by Dr Markus Eichhorn and Dr Ramiro Crego at UCC.

Background and objectives

Forests in Ireland provide an economic return from timber and are also valuable for their contributions to biodiversity and climate change mitigation. C-BioStock is a DAFM-funded project which aims to capture the development of forest structure and composition across the harvesting cycle in Irish forestry estates. Production forests are typically managed in rotation with periodic clear-felling. The C-BioStock project will evaluate changes in forest structure, biodiversity and carbon across the felling cycle to increase understanding of their development and inform management approaches to achieve complementary outcomes. This will be achieved through surveys of chronosequences (different aged stands) and continuous monitoring to capture change in structure and biodiversity (vegetation, birds and soil). Production stands will also be compared to native woodlands to evaluate trade-offs in land cover decision-making.

The project assigned to this studentship has the following core elements:

• Mobile terrestrial LiDAR scanning to capture the three-dimensional structure of forest plots, including different aged stands and repeat surveys for change monitoring
• Visualisation and extraction of structural metrics from LiDAR point clouds
• Identification of appropriate indices to relate to biodiversity data (above and below ground) collected by separate projects within C-BioStock
• Correlation of ground measurements with airborne LiDAR or Earth Observation data for upscaling to generate national-level estimates
• Evaluation of potential structural proxies and their ability to capture carbon or biodiversity metrics at scale in an Irish forestry context

The student will be expected to work in partnership with two other PhD projects at SETU and UCD on collaborative elements of the C-BioStock project, including shared datasets and co-authored publications. There may also be the opportunity to participate in collective fieldwork projects. The candidate will be expected to spend a short secondment at an overseas university to learn methods for integration of terrestrial and Earth Observation data.

The student will join an active group at UCC working on the description and implications of vegetation structure for forest biodiversity, production and ecosystem properties. There will be the opportunity to work towards developing common tools and methodologies with broader applications. 

Funding

Fully funded by DAFM including stipend (currently €25,000 per annum), fees and research costs. 

Start date

1 October 2026

Eligibility criteria

Essential:

• MSc degree in ecology, forestry, remote sensing or a related discipline
• Experience of research design and quantitative methods
• Demonstrated competency in programming (e.g. R, MATLAB, Python, Julia, C++, JavaScript)
• Excellent communication skills, including scientific writing
• Evidence of ability to write or contribute towards scientific publications

Desirable:

• Experience using close-range sensor technologies (e.g. LiDAR, photogrammetry)
• Experience working with LiDAR point cloud data, GIS and/or Earth Observation data and software (e.g. Google Earth Engine, QGIS, Copernicus, GEDI, ICESat-2, NASA)
• Field experience of vegetation surveying or mapping
• Evidence of software development, e.g. GitHub repositories

To Apply: 

Please send your application to Markus Eichhorn at markus.eichhorn@ucc.ie with C-BioStock in the subject line of the email. The deadline is 5 July 2026. 

Please attach a single PDF document that contains:

• A cover letter of 1 to 2 pages: Your letter should clearly set out your suitability and motivation for this studentship with reference to your past relevant experience and achievements.
• A CV that includes your relevant experience, undergraduate results, any relevant publications (if applicable) and contact information for two academic referees.

Please contact Markus Eichhorn at markus.eichhorn@ucc.ie if you have any questions about the position.