Internship in urban grassland inventory and management

Latvian Fund for Nature offers a unique internship position for natural sciences Bachelor student interested in working with grassland habitat inventories and management in urban grasslands. You will have an opportunity to participate in the project GrassLIFE, which is a nation-wide grassland restoration project, dealing with EU priority grassland habitats.

Interns will be provided with the initial training in plant identification upon starting the internship and afterward tasked with independent work under a supervision of an experienced grassland habitat expert. The work will involve extensive fieldwork, working outdoors in various weather conditions, and participation in practical management and restoration activities in the field (inventories of urban grasslands, grassland seed collection), combined with data assembling about plant species. We will provide interns with means of transport and will cover the transport and accommodation costs while working in the field (if those costs would not be covered by Erasmus or other scholarship).

Detailed description of main tasks

Task 1: preparing species descriptions about plants characteristic for urban grasslands
(temporal frame: 4 days a week in May)
Intern duties will focus primarily on creating a particular urban meadow plant's profile based on scientific research about plant ecology - soil and environmental needs, specific relationships with pollinators, uses for phytoremediation, e.t.c.

Task 2: fieldwork with plant species identification in urban grasslands
(temporal frame: 2-4 days a week in June-August)
Intern duties will focus on assisting in the field surveys in urban meadow and meadow 1m2 monitoring: counts of plant species cover in permanent and semi-permanent plots (standard methodology for vegetation description). Other duties may include miscellaneous tasks, as needed, to support the monitoring sites, e.g. sward management in experimental plots (grass cutting, weeding).

Task 3: fieldwork with collecting seeds in grasslands and road verges
(temporal frame: 2-4 days a week in July-August)
Intern duties will focus primarily on particular plant seed collection in semi-natural meadows, road verges, and field edges. The supervisor will provide plant identification in different plant development stages.

Possible additional tasks:
4. Fieldwork in grassland habitat monitoring.
5. Data entry and analysis in the office.