Hello All,

I’m Charlotte, a repeat-CLM intern based in a new town in partnership with the NRCS in the little fishing town of Homer, AK (Discovery Channel’s “The Deadliest Catch” and “The Last Frontier”). I’ll be the acting biotech-ecologist for this office for the duration of the Nulato Hills mapping project. It’s a Soil Survey with vegetation data (which is where I’ll be helping), and it will be published on the Web Soil Survey for all to see, eventually.

This time of year we’re doing the spring thing: ramping up for field work by solving logistical puzzles, like how to get helicopter fuel delivered to a remote field camp. Even with spring excitement, there’s been some snags with budgeting that might cut our field tripping this season, adding work to the following seasons necessary to complete a larger area mapping project. So a data-crunching kind of summer it might turn out to be.

I’m happy to bring some prior experience to the project, having already worked with the NRCS as a seasonal and having Alaska flora-familiarity through a more agency-rounded internship based in Anchorage.

Still, there is a lot of reviewing to do! If anyone has a real knack for grasses (I’m looking at you, range botanists), I’m all ears.

Happy (almost) Spring!

Charlotte
Homer, Alaska