The Lummi Island Heritage Trust, a non-profit accredited land trust, is embarking on an ambitious project to inventory its forested properties. Starting in 2019 with the 104 acre Otto Preserve, this effort will provide a much better understanding of the nature, condition and future of the Trust’s forest resources, and help to define any management actions needed. This project will create one or more exciting and challenging internship opportunities for those who want to work with a professional forester and other natural resource professionals to learn more about forestry, forest inventory, natural resources, and data analysis techniques. This is a great way to use the knowledge and skills you have already acquired in your classes in a practical way to prepare for your professional career.

Anticipated activities for this approximately 3-month project include:

• Geospatial mapping of the forest, including pre-inventory delineation of individual areas within the forest from aerial photos based on cover type, species and age.
• Digitize stand boundaries, then use GPS equipment as available to ground-truth boundaries.
• Aggregate other existing GIS data layers to create a comprehensive resource description of the Preserve.
• Work with forester, Trust staff, and volunteers to plan and conduct the forest inventory, establishing field plots to collect tree, shrub and herbaceous layer data.
• Aggregate field plot data to acre and stand level. Conduct simple statistical analyses of inventory data.
• Prepare a summary report of the mapping and inventory results, as well as potential interpretations of the data.

The Lummi Island Heritage Trust will pay transportation and ferry costs. Hours and timing are flexible. The Trust would expect the intern to have GIS skills and have taken at least one statistics course. Knowledge of forest ecosystems, Pacific Northwest native species, and climate change would be helpful. Please contact the office at 360-758-7997 or email stewardship@liht.org.