Discussion: Anyone looking for a job? (outdoor research)

Matches Made in the Wilderness, in the Name of Science. I was just sent this link to an article about a program that connects scientists with outdoor athletes and adventurers as research assistants that are willing to trek to hard to get places and collect data along the way.

I know there's a lot of sciency people here - anyone looking for a job? ;)

I saw that article too - and I've been on both ends of the hiring for outdoorsy "adventure" jobs.

I spent the summer after my junior year in college doing some bizarre things that turned out to be good training for orienteering. I worked on a bird project in Mark Twain National Forest in central Missouri. Each morning (around 4:30AM) I was handed a map and dropped off in a remote area of the woods, and I had eight hours to walk around the whole map, drawing different bird territories (based on their songs) onto the topo map. Every day I went somewhere different, and I had to cover the whole map. So it was a lot of map reading and wandering around trying not to get lost.

When you found a nest, you also had to mark it on the map, along with information about the status of the nest. Then someone else would have to go find the nest again a week later based on your map and description - which was much like orienteering! Some people were better at marking maps than others.

I've done most of my research as an ecologist in the White Mountains in New Hampshire, so I hire students sometimes to do somewhat crazy things. My students would probably tell you that there's an alarming amount of carrying PVC around involved in ecology....