Hydrologic Monitoring / Environmental Change Intern
Job Description
Length:
Term of position is 47 weeks; this is a full-time 40 hours/week position.
Location:
Jean Lafitte National Historical Park- New Orleans, Louisiana metro area (especially Marrero, LA)
Living Allowance:
$450 /week, disbursed every 2 weeks
AmeriCorps Award:
Position is eligible for an AmeriCorps education award upon successful completion of the program. Education award value is $5,920.00 (pre-tax).
Start Date:
October or November 2019
Application Target Date:
Application review begins 09/27/2019 and continues on a rolling basis.
Position Details:
Stewards Individual Placement Program (SIPP) provides individuals with service and career opportunities to strengthen communities and preserve our natural resources. Participants work with federal agencies, tribal governments, and nonprofits building institutional capacity, developing community relationships, and supporting ecosystem health.
SIPP, in partnership with the National Park Service (NPS), seeks two interns who will work with Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve (JELA) Resource Management (RM) staff to monitor ongoing environmental change and assess ecological responses at the park’s Barataria Preserve. This program focuses on the rapid rate of relative sea level rise in the Preserve’s predominantly freshwater Mississippi River deltaic wetlands. Working closely with JELA’s ecologist and RM staff to inform adaptation planning needs, Steward interns will establish subsidence and hydrology monitoring stations, collect and analyze data, and measure coastal wetland responses to increasing flooding. Stewards also will monitor invasive species biological control effectiveness and develop public and professional outreach for one or more of these projects.
Position Responsibilities will include:
- Establishing monitoring tools to learn about rapid environmental – especially hydrologic – change at the Barataria Preserve, focusing on new park lands and major restoration and mitigation projects,
- Sustaining field data collection for the entire hydrology and elevation monitoring array (EHMA), and for other ongoing environmental and biological monitoring projects,
- Continuing to develop and implement data processing and data stewardship protocols for this and other long-term monitoring projects,
- Analyzing data from one or more of these projects, highlighting new place-based understanding and addressing management-relevant concerns and decisions, and
- Developing and monitoring other tools or programs to assess key environmental changes and biological responses to these changes.
As time and interest allow, JELA RM will encourage Environmental Change Stewards to
- Identify and support opportunities for involving volunteers in this work,
- Work with JELA interpretive staff to develop programs or presentations that communicate the goals and findings of one or more of these projects with public audiences,
- Document each monitoring program following NPS guidance and report formats, and
- Share the new understanding and findings we develop with professional audiences.