This week at NFWF!

             I’ve been doing a lot of research this week at NFWF. Our finalized proposals should be coming in from various agencies over the next two weeks. Hopefully, the different organizations have taken NFWF’s comments from the pre-proposals into consideration and have ensured that all their details and goals are on track. We will then decide if they meet all the requirements set forth by NFWF to get funding for their projects. I have been researching the science behind a few of the proposals to determine if they are feasible and if they will be cost efficient if funded.  I like finding the details they may have left out or ideas that haven’t been taken into consideration yet. Some of the big concepts that I have been looking into include building sustainable oyster reefs for commercial use and putting other artificial reefs in the Gulf for important fish species to use them. I’m starting to understand that there are so many things that can go wrong with these reefs if they aren’t researched and planned out properly beforehand. For oysters, things like salinity, location, and substrate are crucial factors on whether or not they will survive. Artificial reefs are also tricky because you can’t just drop anything in the ocean. Some structures can deteriorate over time and pollute the water which becomes extremely harmful to the fish.

                 This week I was also able to meet more of NFWF’s staff that work with the Gulf Environment Benefit Fund. I was able to sit in on a conference call between these people while they updated each other on what is happening in different parts of the country. They all check in with each other once a month to make sure that everything is on task, and they discuss any concerns or accomplishments. They ensure that all of their funding is on track and going to the proper places.

                On Wednesday, Jon and I took a trip to Gulfport to for a coastal streams meeting. This is a project that has been funded by NFWF to improve the streams that makeup coastal Mississippi’s watershed. The main goal for this project is to mend the quality of the water that is eventually emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. This could mean removing bulkheads and replacing them with living shorelines or educating the community on how to care for the creeks that run through their properties. I was so excited to meet so many different people at this workshop. Some of the representatives included people from the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, USGS, the Nature Conservancy, and the Audubon Society. All of these people collaborated to come up with strategies on how certain streams needed to be improved. Because each region being considered is different, we broke out into groups to come up with ideas for each area. We also identified overreaching problems like invasive species. I enjoyed being able to contribute to these conversations and introducing new ideas that others may not have thought of.

               I’m excited for our proposals to come in soon! I’m also looking forward to doing more site visits for places that may be locations for potential restoration. I’m also very excited to start networking with people that do work in areas that I am very interested in. My boss is eager to set up meetings for me with people from NOAA or other parts of NFWF that have jobs that I may want to look into in the future.

Atchafalaya Basin Technical Advisory Group (TAG) Meeting

This past Wednesday while interning at the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), my mentor Glenn Constant took me with him to the Atchafalaya Basin Technical Advisory Group (TAG) Meeting. The meeting was located downtown and I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

This TAG meeting had specialists from every field including Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF), the Army Corp of Engineers, LSU Renewable Natural Resource Department, the Lafayette wing of the Fish and Wildlife Service, and many more. Mainly they talked about the 2017 annual plan as well as heavy amounts of sediment entering Dog Leg Canal and other ongoing projects for the upcoming year.

The Dog Leg Canal was an issue I had never heard about but it was quite interesting. They are trying to propose wide and deep sediment traps to try and control the amount of sediment that is entering into the canal. In April of 2013 the sediment trap was deep, and this is what they want to see, but in April of 2014 the sediment trap is a bit shallower. This shows that the canal is filling in at a faster rate than expected. The more the canal fills in, the lower the dissolved oxygen in the water. In warmer seasons, the organisms living in this canal are pulling more nutrients out of the already low dissolved oxygen water, which leads to hypoxia. This is why they are proposing to place wide and deep sediment traps in the Dog Leg Canal, but this canal is a popular area for traffic and pedestrians may not agree with the sediment traps.

I think it was interesting to watch all of these very intelligent people from all different backgrounds have a discussion about what would be best for these areas of concern as a whole. It was an aspect of this field that I’ve never seen before and it really opened my eyes to something that I could eventually be doing with my life.

Field visit to Venice Louisiana

This week has been even more exciting than last. I began the week with our field visit to Venice Louisiana. We left early Friday morning and headed down south. The idea of the trip was to visit and see first hand some of the restoration and protection projects in the area. As it turned out we were introduced to a few locals who had very strong opinions on the proposed diversions.

We first visited with Ryan Lambert a charter fisherman with Cajun Adventures. He took us out on his boat in Bay Denese and Grand Bay to see one of the natural diversions they have. He talked to us about how just that small diversion has done so much for his industry and the marsh on the east side of the river. We were able to physically see what the increase in flow of the water and the suspended sediment could do. He also showed us some terracing that had been put in place a few years ago and told us how much more productive the area had become since its implementation. Ryan had very strong feelings on why he thought diversions were the right option because of the effect he has seen them have on his property.

Pipeline left behind after the completion of the marsh creation project.

Marsh buggy left after the completion of the marsh creation project.

Later that afternoon we met up with Acy Cooper and his partner with the Louisiana Shrimpers Association. We were welcomed on to their shrimping boats as they took us to the West side of the river and showed us a dredging project recently completed by the Army Corps of Engineers. He explained that the sediment used for the project was taken from the Gulf and that because the land was built up so quickly he and other shrimpers will be able to continue what they live to do. One of the issues I learned they have with the diversions is the introduction of too much fresh water. The shrimping industry relies on saltier water than Ryan's fishing industry does so the disagreement on the diversions continues. Acy and the other shrimpers were also convinced by the physical presence of so much new land in such a short time period.

Acy showing us how his boat and nets work.

That night we met with a few of the locals and talked to them about their lifestyle and their opinions on what is going on. I'm sure you can imagine we got some pretty colorful responses. An interesting thing I kept hearing was how much in the dark they felt about the projects and proposals being implemented by agencies and government.

Finally, Saturday morning we met with a osyterman Henry McAnespy who showed us a suction dredge project also recently completed. He explained that the sediment was pumped from the river and placed into West Point La Hache. This project was completed in less than a year and it was amazing how much solid land was created. Henry too was anti-diversion with his fear of too much freshwater encroaching on his oyster lease and the time frame in which the project was completed.

It is hard to tell what you should believe or what is the best option when there are so many opposing views. It is however, easy to agree that something must be done, and fast.

As for in the studio I am continuing my work on SWAMP and have been tasked with finding a way to make the boring subject more entertaining for the general public (please send any ideas my way). I have also been assigned to create a field report of everything we learned and saw while in Venice. Myself and two other interns have been working on the report which will also help leverage funding for the studio and future trips.

USGS Week 2

This week at working USGS was more of the same work from the previous week. I continued to process above ground vegetation samples from different sites and plots of areas under the Coastwide Reference Monitoring System (CRMS). What I'm doing by separating live green, yellow, and brown clippings of different wetland grass species is finding biomass. It is known that many of these sites were effected by the BP oil spill but we are trying to figure out to what effect it did. This week I finally wrapped out all of the above ground samples. Next week I will be going into the field around the Houma area to start decomposition study sampling.

Now I would like to talk more about the CRMS, what it is and does. In 1990 the U.S. Congress enacted the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act (CWPPRA) in order to identity, prepare, and fund construction of coastal wetlands restoration projects. This act brought many plans for restoration projects all of different size and types (planting vegetation to diverting rivers.) Since this was a federal act, ecological success needed to be monitored. They would try to compare project sites to reference sites. Reference sites area areas not part or influenced by project sites. These reference sites were difficult to find since the CWPPRA had such a multitude of projects across the coast so most areas were influenced by current projects. The solution to this problem was CRMS. CRMS was a more comprehensive look of ecological condition of the coastal wetlands. The purpose of CRMS is: to improve our ability to determine the effectiveness of individual coastal restoration projects, provide information to evaluate coastal wetlands at the project, basin, and coastwide scales, and to determine the ecological condition of coastal wetlands to ensure that the strategic coastal planning for Louisiana (Coast 2050, LCA, Louisiana Master Plan) is effective in recreating a sustainable coastal ecosystem. CRMS monitoring data includes: water level, salinity, sediment accretion, surface elevation change, composition and abundance of vegetation, ratio of land to water, and soil characteristics. CRMS approach is to take information from a suite of sites that provides a variety of ecological conditions across the coast. A reference site will be an area where restoration was done and was successful and this areas will be compared to an area similar but needs restoration in which would be the project site. Similar restoration plans would be used to save the project site. CRMS is a state project in which USGS is the federal partner. It is funded $11 million a year from the Sport Fish Restoration and Boating Safety Trust Fund (taxes from fishing equipment, small engine, and motorboat fuel.) CRMS has 390 sites, 45 run by USGS and all others by contractors.

First Week at US Fish and Wildlife Service

The first week of my NFWF Applied Scholars Program has been a very informative one for sure. This summer I will be interning at the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). The USFWS is a bureau within the Department of the Interior that has been around for over 125 years. The mission of the service is, “working with others to conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people.” The service is broken up into multiple different branches in order to be as effective as possible.

The office that I will be working in is the Baton Rouge Fish and Wildlife Conservation office and my mentor is Glenn Constant, who happens to be the project leader in this office. I will also be working closely with Kayla Kimmel. Kayla is a fisheries biologist who specializes in alligator gar research and conservation, telemetry and monitoring, and education and outreach. 

Some of the opportunities I am very excited about is that I get to go into the field with some of the biologists and learn more about sonar mapping and how it works in accords to water. Then I get to watch the data that we collect turn into an actual map through GIS programming. I also get to attend meeting with Glenn regarding different issues and policies regarding the Atchafalaya Basin, the Gulf of Mexico Alliance (GOMA), the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission, and other agencies.

Something that I learned about in my first week as an intern that I thought was super cool was telemetry. Telemetry is a process in which measurements or data is collected at certain points and transmitted through specific equipment for monitoring. In this specific office, the biologists study different threatened or endangered species, including Acipenser oxyrinchus desotoi, or the Gulf sturgeon. This fish can reach sizes up to nine feet long and 300 pounds. The Gulf sturgeon is an anadromous fish, which means that they grow and increase their condition in the warm, saltwater of the Gulf of Mexico but each spring they migrate to inland rivers anywhere from Louisiana to Florida to spawn. In order to understand this species more, the biologists here have gone into the field to collect these prehistoric fish and tag them. Kayla explained to me that they use gill nets to catch the sturgeon and then they surgically insert an acoustic tag into the fish. This tag allows them to conduct fish survival studies, monitor the fish’s passage/trajectory, and most importantly measure the bypass effectiveness at dams and other passages. Kayla showed me some of the tags and the amount of technology that can fit inside those devices was amazing. Some of them have a battery that can last up to 7 years!

While the first week of this internship hasn’t been very eventful, I have learned so much and I can’t wait to see what the rest of the summer holds!

First week at the Coastal Sustainability Studio

This summer I have been placed in the Coastal Sustainability Studio on LSU campus. I hadn't actually heard about it until I was introduced to the idea but I have learned a whole lot in my first week here.

First of all the Coastal Sustainability Studio is housed in the Design Building on LSU campus. It is a collaboration and joint effort of professionals from different backgrounds. The studio houses coastal scientists, graphic and interior designers, engineers, computer specialists, landscape architects and others. They all work together in hopes to solve issues and work on projects focused on alleviating issues in coastal Louisiana. The studio is said to sit in the middle of the College of Coast and the Environment, the School of Art and Design and the College of Engineering. People are always talking and asking questions regarding the many projects being worked on. Everyone has something to offer to a project and it's a great way to brain storm and make good ideas even better.

Currently there are many projects going on in the studio, the largest involves designing and contributing information and material for the proposed Water Campus soon to be located in the downtown Baton Rouge area. Multiple projects are being worked on including writing and designing concept pieces for the walls and various kiosks housed in the campus. With this comes the collaboration factor between multiple professions. The designers have input as to how something needs to be executed while the engineers have ideas about how to build it, and the scientists have ideas as to what the project will affect or what needs to be explained for the general public.

This week I have been tasked with researching and helping with one of the kiosks involving coastal monitoring and more specifically the system-wide assessment monitoring program (SWAMP) lead by the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA). The past few days I have been reading previous research and determining important information required to get the idea of Coastal Monitoring out to the general public. Not only have I learned a lot about coastal monitoring, I have learned how interpreting that information is just as important.

Looking around and listening in at meetings I have heard about some of the other projects. Some are working on a wetland planter to be housed in the space, Research is being gathered on where to find the plants, how to keep the plants alive in a closed hydro-logic system and what the problems with this kind of system are. Another involves a wall display of the changing soils of coastal Louisiana over the years.

I hope to learn much more about all the projects and to become more involved in them also. The studio is something I have never heard or seen before so I am thrilled to be a part of something so cool.

As for the rest of the summer we already have a trip planned out to Venice Louisiana for this weekend. We are going to learn more about the landscape and the people who live there. It's great to want to protect the land but without talking to the locals how are we supposed to know what they think about the changing landscape or some of the proposed plans. I look forward to the chance to learn first hand knowledge from the locals and to see more of the ecosystem I enjoy so much.

LDWF First Week

Hello Fellow Bloggers,

I hope ya'lls first week was fantastic. Mine was filled with early mornings, long, long days, and a sunburn. I am being mentored by Keri Landry and working with the LDWF Heritage Program Team. They are responsible for studying the threatened and endangered species in Louisiana, as well as the non game birds in Louisiana. I am glad I will be working with a team of people, who are able to show me all the different areas within the Heritage Program.
I was able to work with the plant biologist yesterday, and he took us to one of the few tall grass prairies in the state. The importance of this prairie, which happens to be on a 8,000 acre farm, is that it shows signs of never being plowed or disturbed. He could tell this by mainly the presence of these yellow flowers in the picture.

If I have learned two things, it is there are a whole lot of plants out there, and you do not go home until the work is done, when dealing with LDWF.

USGS Week 1

The first week of the NFWF Applied Scholar's program has been short, but a great learning experience. The first day was orientation of course where learned the ins and outs of what was doing and what we were supposed to be doing throughout this program. Day two is when we finally met our mentor's and started working. My mentor is Dr. Sarai Piazza who works for the United States Geological Survey (USGS). More specially she works with Coastwide Reference Monitoring System (CRSM) sites. There are hundreds of sites and USGS is responsible for only a subset of them, around two hundred. Their job ultimately is to monitor the water quality to control the habitat of wetlands. Dr. Piazza explained to me some of the policy associated with their work. USGS provides the science to other agencies that come together and make decisions based on the results of the data collected by USGS. It will be interesting to work on projects this summer and know what  I am doing is doing used to make decisions across the country. I traveled to Lafayette with the USGS team to their headquarters. There I got to meet other members of USGS and see more of the main operation of the agency. This is where I learned about what I would be doing in my lab the rest of the week. The next day I go into and am given an office which was weird because I've never had my own office. Me and another member of the USGS team Rachel went to the vegetation lab in order to get samples from CRSM sites. The rest of the week I worked with multiple samples from different CRSM sites and plots. I would take the vegetation samples from these sites and clip them, separating live green from live yellow and live brown; placing them in bags. There were three different change of species I learned about: S. alternifloura, S. patens, and D. spic. It was great learning these wetland species names as I know they are so important to Louisiana wetland ecology. That's what I did for the majority of my week, the week after next I am going in the field for a few days to actually collect samples like the ones I am processing for data now. Below I have an image of S. alternifloura and S. patens.

NFWF - Jamie Amato

          In my first week of my internship, I’ve been able to apply many concepts that I’ve learned over the years to real life scenarios. I have also realized that there is still so much that I have to learn. I am interning for NFWF with Jon Porthouse as my mentor. Jon is the Senior Manager for Coastal Habitat Restoration. The Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund allocates money to projects in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida to aid in the restoration of coastal habitat and the conservation of species that live in these ecosystems. Within my first week, I have been learning the process by which states get funding for projects. Different agencies apply for money through proposals. NFWF takes all factors of the proposals into consideration and then gives feedback on what may have been left out or what research still needs to be done before the project can be approved and implemented. Proposals need to comply with certain conservation guidelines provided by NFWF. They also must meet the criteria of the BP and Transocean plea agreements because that is where the funds for this program come from. Past projects have included barrier island restoration, watershed restoration, and fisheries monitoring. NFWF has given their comments to all of the agencies that applied for funding this year, and the final proposals will come in the next couple of weeks. Then we will determine which ones meet all of the expectations. 
 

            One of the opportunities I’m looking forward to the most is getting to visit some of the sites where the proposed projects are to take place. The purpose of this is to see if the area is suitable for whatever restoration it may need and if the project will be cost-effective. We are also going to get the opportunity to travel to places where projects are underway, and I’ll be able to see the progress being made. Another large part of this job is dealing with the diversion of the Mississippi River. Jon is the author of Louisiana’s Master Plan, and I am extremely excited to get to learn more about that project and to get out to the coast and see what’s being done! 
 

            In these past couple of days I have been challenged to look at the pre-proposals and think critically. I’ve learned how to formulate questions based on the science and policy, and to determine the reasoning behind these things. I was able to compare the ideas that I came up with to the actual comments that NFWF sent back to the various agencies, and I was so excited to see that my suggestions and questions were extremely similar, or the same, as their own! Later today, I got to learn all about certain modeling programs that put a scientific basis behind the interactions of water, land, and people. I was very interested to learn how NFWF dealt with various human-conflicts, and this modeling program is something that quantifies the best way to manage an area. My mentor is doing a great job at introducing me to concepts and ideas that he sees on a frequent basis. Hopefully by the end of this internship I’ll have a grasp on all of these new things. Also, here are some really cool pictures of the views we have from the office. 

Welcome to the 2015 Applied Scholar's Program Blog

          

                                Source: bibliotecapleyades.net

        Welcome to the 2015 National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's Applied Scholar's Program blog. Our fearless team of undergraduate interns will be providing blog contributions as they complete their internships at various NGO's, public, and private sector organizations. Take a tour with them as they share their experiences, their reflections and insights into the world of conservation.