Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program:
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

As an undergraduate at Penn State, I assisted with research focused on the phenological adaptations of plants to nutrient stress and the influence of elevated CO2 levels on plant productivity. After finishing my B.S, I interned with the USFWS at Blackwater NWR and studied the nesting behavior of marsh birds. I then headed south to work at the USGS National Wetlands Research Center, where I assisted with a project that examined the effects of climate change on bald cypress swamps throughout the Mississippi Alluvial Valley. Next, I took a job with the California Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit (CCFWRU) to study the ecological benefits of the federal Wetland Reserve Program (WRP). While at the CCFWRU, I assisted with vegetation, soil, morphological, amphibian and avian surveys, as well as conducted a GIS analysis of the potential flood storage capacity of select WRPs in California's Central Valley and Oregon's Klamath River Basin. It was this project that helped me to realize my calling; I enrolled in Humboldt State University's (HSU) Graduate Certificate in GIS & Remote Sensing program in the spring of 2010. I was also concurrently employed by the USFS and HSU's Institute for Cartography. Specifically, I worked as a biological technician at the USFS's Redwood Sciences Laboratory and examined the spatial patterns of amphibian diseases throughout the Klamath and Cascade Mountains. My employment with the Institute for Cartography helped improve my ability to present...