Aquatic Ecological Monitoring Crew Member

Overview

Lotic Ecological Monitoring

with the Bureau of Land Management

and Southwest Conservation Corps

Position Title: Crew Member

Position Type: Full-time, temporary

Number of Positions: 3

Location: 2 positions in Taos BLM Field Office, New Mexico; 1 position in Las Cruces BLM District Office, New Mexico

Program Dates: Approx. mid-April 2021 to mid-September 2021 (23 weeks)

Salary: $520/week

Benefits: Paid training; camping food allowance ($15/day via company credit card); AmeriCorps Education Award of $3,097.50 upon satisfactory completion of term

Hiring Benefit: Public Land Corps hiring authority: eligible to use, for two years upon completion of term, a noncompetitive hiring status for consideration when applying to competitive service positions for a federal agency; see below.

Southwest Conservation Corps’s Mission

It is the mission of the Southwest Conservation Corps (SCC) to empower individuals to positively impact their lives, their communities, and the environment.

Bureau of Land Management’s Mission

The Bureau of Land Management’s mission is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.

Program Overview:

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the National Aquatic Monitoring Center (NAMC) have developed the National Aquatic Monitoring Framework to fulfill the Aquatic Assessment, Inventory, Monitoring (AIM) initiative. The National Aquatic Monitoring Framework (NAMF) uses the most common indicators within the land health standards (and to functioning stream systems). The NAMF promotes integrated data collection throughout BLM lands by providing guidance for selection of sample reaches within streams, electronic data capture and storage, tools for consistent data analysis and interpretation to inform management questions. The NAMF is a standardized approach for how the BLM can meet multiple monitoring requirements in a consistent, quantitative and credible manner.

One Crew Lead and one (in Las Cruces) or two (in Taos) Crew Member(s) will work together to sample wadeable streams and rivers on BLM land using the National Aquatic Monitoring Framework and Aquatic AIM methodology. They will collect water quality data, stream habitat data, and benthic macroinvertebrate samples, entering all appropriate data into Survey123, a tablet-based data-recording program, while on site. All data will be georeferenced using a GPS unit and stored in an ArcGIS geodatabase. Work will be completed in remote areas on BLM lands. Unconventional work hours, including 10 (sometimes 10+) hour days, are expected. Using a BLM- provided vehicle, crews will drive to several different areas of a vast sample area throughout a four- to eight-day work week (colloquially, “hitch”), camp overnight, hike several miles per day, and return to the office for equipment and data management.

Tagged as: Conservation, Crew, Full Time, Water Skills