Summer Science Fellowship
The Nature Conservancy in Texas seeks a graduate student to work with our science program. This position will run from mid-May to mid-August 2022 (exact dates determined by student availability). The Nature Conservancy will provide a $6000 grant to pay the student’s summer salary. The internship can be fully remote or be hosted at Conservancy offices in San Antonio or Houston.
The focus for the student’s time with our team is to develop a method to extract quantitative measures of woody encroachment from landscape photos of grasslands. The Nature Conservancy owns and manages grasslands throughout the state and much of our management focuses to treating woody plant invasion. We have photo points and quantitative woody cover information at some preserves. Being able to extract woody encroachment data from photos will increase our monitoring efficiency and allow us to expand our grassland monitoring to additional sites.
The student will be provided with photos and associated woody cover data from transects (to be used for validation). The student will develop and validate a method to extract quantitative woody cover data from the photos. If time allows, the student will apply that method to monitoring photos from 2016-2022 and analyze changes in woody cover related to land management practices, including prescribed fire, mowing, and chemical treatments.
During the summer, the student will be mentored by Ecologist and Science Project Director Charlotte Reemts, in collaboration with the student’s advisor, with regular communication among all three. The student will have optional opportunities to help collect ecological field data at grassland sites in Texas (for students located in Texas). We anticipate that the student will spend about half their time working on the fellowship project.
The stipend money will be awarded as a fellowship grant to the student’s home university to be paid as salary, allowing the graduate student to remain enrolled at the home university and to continue receiving benefits, including health insurance. This position is open to MSc and PhD students.
Applicants should submit the information below to Charlotte Reemts (creemts@tnc.org) no later than March 1, 2023:
1. a CV or resume,
2. a brief letter of support from applicant’s academic advisor,
3. 1 page cover letter articulating the applicant’s interest in the position, including how this position would help meet the applicant’s career goals,
4. 1 page proposal describing proposed methods for the summer project
Please contact Charlotte Reemts directly with questions or to express interest in the position.