Week 9: Final week

What a whirlwind of preparation for this week: late nights, many emails, edits and even a little anxiety! I am very impressed with all the intern’s presentations from yesterday.  What confidence you had!  I’m thrilled to be part of such a great program. Science came alive for me this summer.  I am forever grateful to… Read More

Week 7: Seedlings!

Hi, Some sites have not had many seedlings while others have lots!!  Yesterday we were at Bald Mountain in Boulder County.  Lesley was kind enough to help us out.  I think she had fun with the densiometer. 🙂 When a plot (at most locations we survey 5 plots) has many visible seedlings, we take one… Read More

Week 6: FRRT

Hi, Even though my mentor is out of town, she still has me busy!  She arranged for me to join in a field trip with the Front Range Round Table.  It’s a diverse group of individuals from various organizations coming together to discuss forest restoration.  I am not sure of the history of the group,… Read More

Week 5: Field work and field data

Hi all, We had a wonderful week in the field.  This week we visited Bald Mountain, Sunshine Canyon and Heil Valley.  These are all beautiful sites. We still have work to do in all of them, and I look forward to having Jennifer, Lesley and Moana join us! Our data collection is coming along and… Read More

Week 4: More field work!

Hi, Originally I thought collecting data on 8 sites with 5 plots each was a rather unattainable goal.  However, our team has become so efficient.  Now I see not only is it possible, but that we may even have time for even more data collection. This week we had field work at Maxwell Ranch in… Read More

Week 3: In the field

This week we visited an unmanaged site that was not affected by the beetles. It will serve as a control to compare our findings from the affected sites. It was in Sunshine Canyon in Boulder County. The day was hot but there was no rain. It is a lovely site! Our data collection process is… Read More

Week 2: First Week “on the job”

This week has been wonderful. I did learn early on that you should probably get permission before taking photos at federal government buildings. I’m based at USGS for my project. My mentor is Jenny Briggs, a research ecologist, and Fleur Ferro, a biology instructor from the Community College of Denver, is part of our team… Read More