Initial Meeting 1-11-11

So I'm beginning my senior internship to graduate from environmental studies at UCSC. Since I had done blogging before and really enjoyed it, I figured why not try a blog as my journal requirement for my internship. I am currently working with the US Department of Agriculture under the Natural Resources Conservation Services division. I was originally taking an ENVS seminar in an intermediate GIS course but ended up dropping it and therefore I was in a state of panic searching for an internship opportunity. Fortunately, the Envs internship advisor Chris Krohn helped out by providing me with USDA-NRCS.

I first met Rich Casale, my agency sponsor, on the day all of my paperwork was due. He had wanted to make sure this would be a good fit, but I already knew it would be. We spent the first part of our meeting discussing the benefits of working with the Federal Government and how the benefits and job security outweigh the paycheck associated with other jobs. I fortunately had already been encouraged by my mother to search for jobs with the federal department after graduation, so I pretty much agreed with everything Rich said. We also discussed the benefits of the USDA and how there were locations across the US that I could possibly find a job after graduation. I was excited to hear they even had locations in Hawaii, the main place I was looking at for relocation after graduation.

Then we got into the important stuff. We discussed my interest in environmental studies, which has been vast indeed. Because I originally began as a policy focus, I am getting my legal studies minor and took a couple policy classes. After New Zealand, I was much more focused on resource management and monitoring and so I've been trying to gear towards that direction now. This internship sounded perfect because it works with both of those. We help private land owners to do natural resource reports of their land. This requires helping them know what resources they have, how to best manage them, what permits are needed. This means there is going to be some office work making maps, working with GIS, doing write ups, as well as some field work. I am definitely excited to do both.

My first assignment is to try out the web soil survey provided by NRCS. Its a mapping program that allows anyone to put in an address and find out what type of soil is available on your land. This program can do anything from acres upon acres to someones tiny backyard. Knowing your soil type can help farmers know what crops would be more successful, or let someone know how erodible your backyard is. I am excited that there is such a sophisticated mapping program available to anyone. I look forward to getting really comfortable with the program.