I’ve pasted below the listings I have up on the undergrad research page: https://airtable.com/
- Luke Macaulay
1)
Project Title
Maryland Landowner Survey on Wildlife Management: Implementing, Analyzing, and Publishing
Project Description
With over 92% of Maryland's land area under private ownership, the future of wildlife and conservation heavily relies on private landowners. This research seeks to develop a more detailed understanding of private landowner interaction with wildlife, and to better understand the educational approaches that can be used to foster improved conservation outcomes.
The project PI has conducted focus groups, consulted with professionals in survey development, and developed a sample of all landowners in Maryland, and begun testing the implementation of a landowner survey. We seek a student with interest or knowledge of best practices in survey implementation who can assist with the following: review the current survey, working to increase response rate, and help manage aspects of implementation of the survey which will be conducted using both email lists and a mailed survey.
After implementation of the survey, the student will have the opportunity to assist with creating basic summary statistics of results, create figures, and implement the latest analytical approaches currently in use in the literature related to survey analysis. A particular focus for the project is to gather baseline information from which to assess behavior change in the future as a result of future educational programming.
Keywords
survey, behavior change, private landowner, wildlife, conservation, analysis
Required Skills
• Knowledge of data analysis methods in reproducible formats, preferably in R or Python.
• Knowledge of survey methods, and approaches to increase sample size, reduce bias, and control for methodological issues in better understanding landowner interest, knowledge, and implementation of a variety of wildlife management and conservation practices.
• Strong writing skills for drafting materials to be published in peer-reviewed literature. Co-authorship is expected and encouraged.
2)
Project Title
Wildlife Research & Extension Technician
https://agnr.umd.edu/about/
Project Description
* Develop long-term series of scheduled posts for social media education about Maryland wildlife.
* Classify trail camera images using software tools or spreadsheets
* Review thermal drone imagery to quantify deer populations.
* Process aerial drone imagery into maps and conduct analysis of vegetation cover, potentially in R package FieldImageR.
* Collect vegetation data on research plots including assessing plant damage in agronomic or horticultural crops; photographing plots; clipping, drying, and weighing biomass; estimating yield of crops; and organizing photographs and other data into cloud storage system.
* Deploy and collect acoustic monitoring devices to analyze presence of bird species of concern. Review and digitize occurrences in recordings.
* Assist with managing research plots at University of Maryland Research and Education Centers including planting, harvesting, monitoring, collection of trail camera images, placement of wildlife exclosures, etc.
* Clean and analyze precision agriculture data to determine crop variability and wildlife impacts on yield
* Assist with deploying and testing wildlife damage preventions methods including repellents, fencing, and innovative planting approaches
* Assist with logistical aspects of holding educational workshops related to wildlife and habitat management including reserving locations, ordering refreshments, managing invitations, etc.
* Assist with developing wildlife section of website, including finding images, organizing content, and promoting on social media accounts.
* Assist with implementation of a large landowner survey including performing literature review, organizing data, performing GIS analysis of land cover by landowner, testing the survey with landowners, and data cleaning and analysis tasks.
Keywords
wildlife, data analysis, statistics, visualization, writing, field work, environment
Required Skills
• Ability to pay close attention to detail.
• Ability to learn basic operation of new software programs independently (training will also be provided)
• Preferred but not required: Past experience with using R statistical program and GIS tools (QGIS)
Web Site