Rare Plant Monitoring at Fort Ord National MonumentAt — Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
Service learners will locate and identify populations of rare, endangered, or important plant species including Monterey Gilia, Contra Costa Goldfields, Monterey Spineflower, Seasird Bird’s-beak, and Dudleya succulents in the field at Fort Ord National Monument (FONM). Service Learners in Fall will promote populations of rare plants by clearing brush in rare plant sites that are threatened by brush encroachment. This is a great opportunity to get off the beaten path and explore areas of the monument that are not open to the public. If service-learners are also interested in getting more experience with ArcGIS Pro, they may also organize existing spatial data and potentially add new observations to the database by using GPS to document plant populations. This work will inform the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) how rare plant populations are changing through time.
Shifts:
- Mondays and Tuesdays from 8 to 12:30pm
- 3 service learners each day
We do not consider our SL opportunities to be competitive, but we do request that SLers have great communication and time management throughout the semester.
Students will have direct supervision throughout the duration of their service-learning. Training will focus on plant identification, survey methods, data entry, and mapping.
BLM staff will be present at all times while students are performing fieldwork and will be available to provide further resources and/or readings to answer any potential questions or fields that students may be interested in. Students chosen for this position will work with other service-learners and will have multiple staff members available to help.
Service learners will be asked to take the Unexploded Munitions Identification (UXO) Training. No one working or volunteering on Fort Ord National Monument has ever been hurt by explosives (and few people ever see them outside of exclusion zones) but to be safe everyone needs a brief training to know what they look like and avoid them if ever seen.
Interested students should contact:
Aubrie, Heckel
jheckel@blm.gov
831-582-2249
We will schedule a time for a meeting through phone or zoom. Our staff will explain a typical day and what you need to be prepared.
We do not consider our SL opportunities to be competitive, but we do request that SLers have great communication and time management throughout the semester.
No resume or official interview questions are required.