Project 14 - Black carbon in upland and agricultural landscapes - consequences for food production and climate change mitigation

Are you passionate about solving complex environmental challenges? Interested in creating non-toxic environments that benefit society and nature alike? This innovative and exciting PhD project, co-designed with non-academic partners, is part of the NERC-funded ECOSOLUTIONS Doctoral Focal Award, and offers the opportunity to address real world challenges with key opinion-formers to help support sustainable chemical development and create non-toxic urban & rural landscapes.

Project details:

The UKs industrial past has left a lasting environmental legacy, with pollutants, including black carbon particulates formed from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biomass, and heavy metals deposited across agricultural landscapes from grazed peat-rich uplands through to arable and lowland pastures. These pollutants have accumulated in soils and remain stored for decades, potentially impacting on the food system. Concurrently, management of the UKs agricultural landscape has introduced chemicals (e.g. fertilisers and pesticides) into the soil system which potentially interact with accumulated pollutants with consequences for soil health and its ability to deliver crucial ecosystem services (e.g. food production, carbon sequestration, water filtration, flood mitigation). The impact of agricultural management and its interaction with black carbon and heavy metals is underexplored - compromising our ability to inform policy to improve soil health for sustainable agricultural production and ecosystem service delivery.

This interdisciplinary PhD will use a landscape-scale case-study in the Dearne Valley, South Yorkshire, a rural post-industrial landscape shaped by farming with an arable, pasture and peatland mosaic. The region's uplands also experience managed burns and wildfires (increasing due to climate change) that provide an additional black carbon source across the landscape. It will use a combination of field and laboratory experiments to explore:

1. How agricultural management and long-term pollution, particularly black carbon, affect the soil chemical environment.
2. How black carbon interacts with common agricultural chemicals to impact soil health, function and ecosystem service provision.
3. Pathways to sustainably manage agricultural landscapes while reducing the harmful impacts of management practices, to directly influence policy.

This PhD project will enable the student the opportunity to gain skills in experimental design, field surveying, soil sampling, laboratory analysis, spatial analysis and knowledge exchange with farmers, land managers and policy-makers to answer real-world challenges relating to future sustainability and resilience.

The ECOSOLUTIONS DFA

Led by the Universities of Sheffield and York and the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, ECOSOLUTIONS is a cutting-edge, transdisciplinary initiative. This innovative programme combines science, policy, and societal engagement to transform chemicals policy and management, enabling a safe, sustainable chemicals sector and non-toxic environments. This project is one of 19 projects that are available for the third ECOSOLUTIONS and final cohort who will work together to begin to understand and solve the problems of sustainable chemical design and use, as well tackling the problems that pollution causes in urban environments, rural landscapes and food systems.

What You will Gain

As an ECOSOLUTIONS PhD student, you will work with world-leading experts across diverse fields such as ecology, data science, digital solutions, chemistry, geography, psychology, environmental engineering, policy, and law. You will learn to tackle the risks posed by chemicals while enabling their societal benefits, adopting a whole-systems and solutions-focused approach.

You will receive 3 years and 9 months of funding and take part in a dynamic training and development programme, including:

• Induction course: Connect with fellow students, supervisors, and the ECOSOLUTIONS team while exploring the programme's mission.
• Primer course: Gain foundational knowledge on the environmental risks that chemicals pose, policy landscapes, and sustainable chemical innovation.
• Transferable skills workshops: Master data management, big data methods, research practices, communication, stakeholder engagement and more.
• Systems-solutions workshops: Collaborate across disciplines to explore sustainable chemical design and development, address pollution in urban & rural landscapes, and develop actionable solutions.
• Three-month secondment: Joint Nature Conservation Committee
• International conferences: Share your findings and network with global experts.

The skills you will need

The project would suit a student with:

• Laboratory skills
• Field experience
• Data analysis and/or modelling

Eligibility:

To be considered for the ECOSOLUTIONS DFA, you will need at least an upper 2nd class honours degree or equivalent in a relevant discipline.

As a collaboration of international research-led universities, we welcome students from all walks of life and from across the world. Within our programme, we are dedicated to diversifying our community.

As part of our ongoing work to improve Equality, Diversity and Inclusion we strongly encourage applications from UK/Home candidates from identified underrepresented groups: Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, those from a disadvantaged socio-economic background, and disabled people.

Start Your Research Career with ECOSOLUTIONS:

This PhD is part of the ECOSOLUTIONS Doctoral Focal Award (DFA), a prestigious NERC-funded program dedicated to training the next generation of environmental practitioners. For more details and a full list of other PhD projects under this programme, visit: https://ecosolutions.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/

Application Web Page:

For more information on how to apply, please visit the ECOSOLUTIONS website: https://ecosolutions.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/

Project specific enquiries: Professor Jill Edmondson, j.edmondson@sheffield.ac.uk

Funding Notes

This is a full scholarship which will cover tuition fees and provide an annual stipend in line with UKRI recommended levels (£21,805 for the 2026/2027 academic year, TBC in 2027/2028) for the 45 months duration.

Due to CDT funding rules and Institutional policies, there is a cap on the number of scholarships that can be awarded to DFA students. Once this limit has been reached, ECOSOLUTIONS DFA scholarships will only be awarded to students who are eligible for Home fee status. York and UKCEH led projects can only fund applications from UK/Home eligible applicants and Sheffield can accept applications from both with very limited places for international students.