Junior Specialist in the Department of Geography

 unior Specialist in the Climate Hazards Group in the Department of Geography

Where and when will food insecurity occur in the world? Where will food shortages affect the lives of large numbers of people in the coming months? How will anthropogenic climate change impact food production in the coming decades? Since 2003, the Climate Hazards Group (CHG) has taken a climate science-based approach to answering these fundamental questions.
Using a combination of remote sensing data and ground observations as inputs, CHG scientists have developed rainfall and other models that reliably predict crop performance in parts of the world vulnerable to crop failure. Policy makers within governments and at non-governmental organizations rely on CHG decision-support products for making critical resource allocation decisions.
Today, due mainly to insufficient water availability, fifty nations throughout the world face chronic food shortages, with 20% or more of their populations under-nourished. In the next twenty years, the average supply of water per person world-wide is expected to drop by a third. By 2050, as many as seven billion people may face acute, persistent water shortages.
As water availability shrinks in many of the world's food-producing regions, effective climate change adaptation will determine the fates of billions of people. Effective adaptation requires knowing where increasingly scarce rains will fall, where snowpack will accumulate and melt, and where lack of precipitation of any kind will render specific locales uninhabitable
The Climate Hazard Group uses the UCSB Geography department's strengths in statistical climatology, hydrology, GIS, remote sensing, and geostatistics to reduce the threat of flooding and famine in the developing world. The CHG works closely with governmental institutions (especially the United States Geological Survey (USGS) International Program) to improve the scientific research, capacity building, and application components of the USAID-funded FEWS NET.

Duties: The successful applicant will perform statistical analysis, run crop models, evaluate remotely sensed data and other outputs, write documents or contribute to scientific reporting and peer-reviewed journal articles, and perform limited administrative tasks.