Our Scholarships
We have Honours and PhD Scholarships Available In Australian Spatial Hydrology
The International Centre of Water for Food Security (IC WATER) is a strategic research, training and higher education centre established at Charles Sturt University (CSU), Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia. The Centre has challenging goals for our industry to:
- Improve our environment for future generations
- Better manage water resources within rural, peri-urban, and irrigation communities, and
- Seek local solutions for global impacts
We are actively seeking two highly motivated and talented students with an outstanding academic record from an applied Hydrology and/or Remote Sensing to undertake PhD research within the following research priority areas of IC WATER:
- Integrated mapping and modeling of water and carbon footprints in agro-ecosystems;
- Mapping of actual evapotranspiration using Large Aperture Scintillometer (LAS) in the context of Australian agro-ecosystems;
- Agro-hydrological data assimilation with LAS and remote sensing data;
- Land surface flux modeling using Eddy Covariance Flux (ECF) techniques;
- Boundary layer physics and transport mechanisms for increased accuracy in remotely sensed estimates of agricultural water and carbon footprints; and
- Investigation of the fundamentals of land surface fluxes for remote sensing-based evapotranspiration mapping.
We are also seeking four Honours students with an exceptional academic aptitude in Environmental Sciences and/or Information Technology to undertake research on the above-mentioned topics, and/or the following ones:
- Hydro-Informatics and Decision-Support software applications.
- Remote Sensing and Modeling for agricultural applications.
- Addition of Novel Classification and Clustering Algorithms in a Decision Support System for Enhancing its Functionality.
- Distributed Processing of a Classification Algorithm such as Neural Network and Decision Tree.
- Integration of Various Data Sets and Models in an existing Decision Support System.
- Development of a Geo-processing Service with Real Time Data from Sensor Networks.
- Inter-comparison of evapotranspiration algorithms from optical-thermal satellite data
Background in Applied Mathematics, Meteorology and Physics will be advantage in final selection of candidate.
IC WATER is undertaking several exciting spatial hydrology projects funded by key national and international agencies and further information about the projects is available here
These exciting projects are using an Unmaned Airborne Vehicle (UAV) and satellite data to measure important hydrological parameters including actual evapotranspiration and soil moisture at spatial scales ranging from farm field to the catchment level. The project test sites are scattered across Australia. Field sites include; Coleambally irrigation area in Southern NSW; Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area (MIA) in Griffith NSW; Macintyre Brooke in Queensland; Lime Stone Coast in South Australia; The Moree flood plain area in Northern NSW and Southern Qld. These sites are equipped with advanced meteorological & hydrological equipment including soil moisture probes, Large Aperture Scintillometers (LAS) and Eddy Covariance Flux (ECF) systems for the accurate calibration and validation of remote sensing based hydrological research work.
These research projects will involve working in a multi-disciplinary CSU research team and collaborating with national agencies and international research institutes. The successful applicants will work closely with the specialised scientific teams already assembled to undertake these exciting and cutting edge scientific hydrological investigations.
The scholarships are only available to Australian or New Zealand citizens OR persons granted permanent residency status in Australia.
The scholarship commencement date is February 2010.
Applications close: 15 November 2009
For further details on the priority research degree topics within the Centre or to obtain Scholarship Information, please contact Associate Professor Mohsin Hafeez, Director IC Water.
Work Phone Number: 61-2-69332542; Mobile: 61-411-768900