Forest Monitoring Intern
The Eastern Shore of Maryland, ranging primarily between Salisbury and Snow Hill.
The work setting is The Nature Conservancy’s ~10,000-ac Nassawango Creek Preserve (NCP) located on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in Wicomico and Worcester Counties. This preserve has significant conservation value, functioning to protect water quality and biodiversity in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, while also making a sustainable contribution to the local forest-based economy. In 2010, the Conservancy brought in a third-party auditor to review our sustainable forest management practices at NCP, and we are now certified through the Forest Stewardship Council (“FSC certified”).A primary function of these positions (two concurrent 9-mo interns are being sought) will be forest measurements, including basic inventory and monitoring data to maintain our FSC certification. We are in the process of rolling out a permanent inventory and monitoring system for NCP that will involve periodic re-measurement in order to provide the information necessary for management planning and reliable tracking of important conservation values over time. Interns will gain real world experience in various aspects of sampling design, data collection, summary, and analysis. Habitat features and non-traditional elements of forest inventory will also be measured and characterized. Interns will be involved in various ongoing studies on ecological forestry and restoration ecology practices in some of our target habitats, including inland dunes and Atlantic white-cedar swamps. Other valuable skills that will be enhanced/developed through this involvement include the use of GIS/GPS technologies in resource management, dendrology and other basic naturalist skills, and the use of various software related to forest inventory and growth modeling.
