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Public Land Name:
Redwood National Park

Position Title:
Lower Prairie Creek Resource Inventory [Diversity] (1st of 2 Positions)

Agency: NPS

Position Type: Diversity

Position ID Number:
2015103

Location:
Orick, CA

Accepting Applications?

# of current Applicants: 0

Position Description:
Background Information: Redwood National Park was created in 1968 to preserve intact, old-growth redwood ecosystems. Under the Redwood National Park Expansion Act of 1978, 48,000 acres were added to protect the Park from encroaching logging activities. The expansion included 38,000 acres that had been logged, and the new law mandated a program of rehabilitation to restore these lands. Two programs emerged from the restoration effort: The Watershed Rehabilitation Program, which sought to control erosion and sedimentation issues via road removal, and The Forest Restoration Program, which sought to manage second-growth forests via adjusting species compositions and decreasing stand density. The Lower Prairie Creek Restoration Project is Redwood National Parks first attempt at a large-scale, integrated ecosystem restoration planning effort. Position Description: These position(s) will have an opportunity to work with a variety of technical specialists in a unique setting. Much of the field and office work will be geared toward inventorying of the physical landscape. The data gathered will help to develop a multidisciplinary, integrated watershed-scale restoration plan for a heavily disturbed portion of coast redwood forest. The individuals will assist with a number of projects and will interact with restoration geologists, restoration foresters, channel morphologists, interpreters and fish and wildlife biologists. The individual(s) will learn how to describe physical elements of the disturbed landscape, and contrast those current conditions to undisturbed reference watersheds. Depending on time constraints, interpretation elements may be folded into the experience. The project area is 165 acres and has been disturbed by logging activity prior to park ownership. A number of listed species, including anadromous fish, birds and terrestrial mammals, inhabit the area. The intern’s goal will be to describe the current conditions of the sub-catchment, the legacy impacts from past logging and road building and how the alteration of the physical environment is impairing the sustainability of threatened and endangered species. The participant will learn forest sampling including stand inventory using a variety of forest inventory techniques, fuels sampling, potentially marking timber for thinning, and use of standard forestry equipment such as BAF prisms, dbh tapes, GPS units, map/compass, clinometers etc. The park has developed in-house protocols for inventorying erosion sites and survey methods for estimating road fill volumes. Participantswill be trained to use surveying equipment to quantify road fill volumes in stream channels and hill slopes and then digitize these areas using ArcMap. Channel characterization methods are being developed that will help describe how the sediment inputs have altered morphology and function. This position is offered through the Geological Society of America’s GeoCorps America Program in partnership with the National Park Service’s Geoscientists-in-the-Parks (GIP) Program.

If you have questions about the application and selection process, please contact GSA's GeoCorps managers.  If you have questions about any aspect of the position — description, qualifications, housing, dates — please direct them to the contact(s) listed in the project description. Remember, application materials can only be submitted online. The project contact(s) will not accept application materials sent to them via e-mail, mail, fax, etc. See the full program details at the GeoCorps homepage.