Upcoming internship opportunity through the National Park Service Scientists in Parks program
NPS is looking for someone to work with the NPS Southern Arizona Fire Management Group and our NPS partners in the Sonoran Desert Network, Saguaro NP, and Chiricahua NM. The intern will work with ecologists, fire managers, and data managers throughout the project and will have the opportunity to learn about multiple program areas within the National Park Service.
The focus of this position is synthesizing fire monitoring data collected over the past 30 years in Saguaro NP (SAGU) and Chiricahua NM (CHIR) to help inform fire management planning in these parks. The intern will analyze trends in vegetation data and fuel loading in response to prescribed fire and wildfire over time. Monitoring plots have burned between one and five times since installation and had varying fire history prior to installation. Plots in SAGU are in ponderosa pine, mixed conifer, and pine-oak forest communities while those in CHIR are a mix of grasslands, manzanita shrublands, and pine-oak forest communities. Data analysis and summary reports from this project will directly address fire and resource management information needs in the parks. Opportunities will also exist to work on syntheses of fire effects plot data, Inventory & Monitoring plot data, and Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) data to help inform future fire monitoring efforts in Southern Arizona park units. This internship is a collaboration between the Sonoran Desert Network (SODN), Southern Arizona Fire Management Group, Intermountain Region Fire Ecology Program, and resource management staff at both parks. The intern will work with ecologists, fire managers, and data managers throughout the project and will have the opportunity to learn about multiple program areas within the National Park Service.
