PhD Studentship: Hydro-geomorphic Impacts of the Return of the Beaver, Fully-funded MSc by Research. in Exeter

Until approximately 500 years ago, European Beaver (Castor Fiber) were hunted for their fur, castoreum and meat, leading to their extirpation (local extinction) on the British mainland and a consequent degradation of the freshwater habitats that they used to thrive within. The loss of a keystone species like the beaver has meant that many of the critical ecosystem services that they support, such as water storage, flow attenuation, wetland biodiversity, carbon storage and improved water quality, have also been lost from the landscape.

However, populations of the Castor Fiber are now expanding rapidly across Britain, as efforts are made to reintroduce this once common ecosystem engineer to British freshwater habitats. One of the challenges that this MSc by Research will address is that beavers are now returning to much more intensively-managed, ‘anthropocene’ landscapes – and we simply do not know how their ecosystem engineering will change these heavily modified places. Generating this understanding will be a key component of the research, particularly because landowners (like the National Trust who are partners and co-funders of this research) need to know what beavers will do and where, in order to support their own plans for nature recovery and environmentally progressive land management.

A further challenge lies in the need to optimise the positive impacts that beavers might deliver and minimise the negative impacts, reducing conflicts between beavers and humans, enabling us to renew coexistence with this once common species. Thus, the research will also address where changes (most commonly brought about by the construction of dams and excavation of floodplain canals) occur, what they do to both hydrology and geomorphology and how these changes compare across all the beaver sites in Great Britain, which represent very diverse land use, land management and degrees of ‘wildness’.

To address these challenges, the project will:

• Review global literature on the hydro-geomorphic impacts of beaver engineering, including an assessment of methods to quantify impacts and upscale site-scale findings (desk-based, months 0-3).
• Develop simplified and accessible rapid assessment approaches to quantify water storage across many different beaver wetlands (field-based, months 3-18).
• Undertake detailed field surveys (using drones and ground-based survey equipment) of a number of beaver sites in south west England to calibrate national datasets built through the previous point (field and computer-based, months 12-18).
• Publish a paper describing the extent to which beavers change hydrology and geomorphology (desk-based, months 18-24).

The project will be based within the leading beaver research team in England, at the University of Exeter, where beaver research to pioneer our understanding of the return of the beaver has built a strong team over the last 15 years numbering half a dozen research staff. As such, the MSc by Research student will be well supported and surrounded by colleagues who are deeply knowledgeable about this remarkable species. All appropriate training will be provided by the team, including drone-piloting, field survey methods, data analysis and any other training needs.

Funding Comment: UK tuition fees and an annual tax-free stipend of at least £21,805 per year.