The international research training group INTERCOAST - 'Integrated Coastal Zone and Shelf-Sea Research' is a collaboration between the Universities of Bremen (Germany) and Waikato (New Zealand). Research themes focus on aspects of global and climate change which have strong impacts in coastal and shelf-sea zones and are of ecological, geo-scientific, socio-economic, and legal interest. This training group will educate interdisciplinary, highly motivated, and internationally visible scientists in the fields of Marine Geosciences, Marine Ecology, Social Sciences, and Law.

Projects will involve research relevant to the North Sea (Germany) and Bay of Plenty coastlines (NZ). Students will be based at the University of Waikato and will visit the University of Bremen for an extended stay of six to twelve months. Students will also participate in the annual workshops which will alternate between the two Universities. Students will be working in a rich research and training environment through interaction with the thirteen currently enrolled INTERCOAST PhD students, two postdoctoral researchers, and supervisors from the Universities of Waikato and Bremen.

The research topics that are available to students are:

LAW

• NZ1: Legal problems in fisheries management
• NZ2: Law for coastal and marine energy resources

SCIENCE

• NZ3: Morphodynamic response to extreme events
• NZ4: Tidal inlets dynamics
• NZ5: Biostabilisation of benthic sediments
• NZ6: Modelling estuarine nutrient dynamics and macrophyte blooms
• NZ7: The impact of macrophyte mats on benthic nutrient dynamics

SOCIAL

• NZ8: The use of GIS and remote sensing as a planning tool to spatially represent values and context of the coastal environment
• NZ9: Understanding social change in coastal communities and its environmental implications

For more information on these PhD topics and the application process, please refer to the web address:

http://www.waikato.ac.nz/research/scholarships/scholarships_and_prizes.shtml

All enquiries should be directed to: Dr John Tyrrell jtyrrell@waikato.ac.nz

Application deadlines:

Stage One:

Expressions of Interest must be submitted by 31 August 2010.

Stage Two:

Applications for University of Waikato INTERCOAST Doctoral Scholarship close 30 September 2010.