Summer Job, Ecology -- The Aspen Delineation Project

Summer Quarter 2007

Employment Opportunity in Resource Management

Several University of California at Davis undergraduate students are sought for a Student Assistant III position. The positions are established as part of a Joint Venture Agreement with the United States Forest Service. The students will work collaboratively with the principal investigators on the collection and analysis and dissemination of information regarding the restoration and management of quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) in the western United States. Hours are flexible, but 10 to 30 hours per week are preferred.

The Aspen Delineation Project, a cooperative project of the US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and the California Department of Fish and Game, has created a website that serves as a consolidated and centralized clearinghouse of reference information concerning the ecology and management of aspen communities in North America. This site is intended to provide bibliographic, research, and management information to all stakeholders, including land and resource managers, scientists, private landowners, and the general public.

Students will collect data relating to quaking aspen from a range of sources that include web and library research, as well as local and regional depositories of federal and state agency information. Data subjects include: bibliographic data (published and grey literature), active research projects, current management being implemented (assessment, treatment, and monitoring), news/press releases, and coming events (conferences and workshops). Student employees will then establish or update databases and work collaboratively with the webmaster to post databases on www.aspensite.org.

This collaboration will help students (1) gain expertise in locating, analyzing, and interpreting data, (2) develop skills in web-based data management, (3) learn about a critical ecological habitat, (4) discover how Federal and State manage, monitor, and restore ecosystems, (5) identify contemporary ecosystem management issues between stakeholders, and (6) increase possibility of eventual employment with federal land management agencies.

Please contact Dr. Kenneth Tate, Rangeland Watershed Specialist, Department of Plant Sciences at kwtate@ucdavis.edu if interested in this position.