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 urbanLIFEcircles, which is an international Estonian - Latvian - Denmark project, dealing with biodiversity-oriented change in urban nature management.

Interns will be provided with the initial training in plant identification upon starting the internship and afterward tasked with independent work under the supervision of an experienced grassland habitat expert. The work will involve intensive field work, working outdoors in various weather conditions, and participation in practical management and restoration activities in the field - inventories of urban grasslands, containment of invasive species, grassland seed collection, yellow rattle Rhinanthus minor 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 of urban grasslands
(temporal frame: 1-2 days a week in May-August)
Intern duties will focus primarily on creating a particular profile of urban meadow plants, based on scientific research about plant ecology - soil and environmental needs, specific relationships with pollinators, uses for phytoremediation, etc.

Task 2: fieldwork with the removal of invasive species
(temporal frame: 2-4 days a week in May-August)
Intern duties will focus on the limitation of invasive and undesirable species such as Canada goldenrod Solidago canadensis, Bigleaf Lupine Lupinus polyphyllus, warty-cabbage Bunias orientalis, etc. in urban meadow sites.

Task 3: fieldwork in urban grasslands with plant species identification
(temporal frame: 2-4 days a week in May-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 4: 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:
5. Fieldwork in grassland habitat monitoring.
6. Participation in organizing public events.
7. Data entry into database and data analysis (office work).

HOW TO APPLY

1. Record a short (max. 3 min.) video about yourself: brief presentation, your study area, why you want to come here, everything that you would like to tell us! Upload the video on any video sharing platform you use - Dropbox, YouTube, Vimeo, WeTransfer, etc.
2. Prepare your CV.
3. Apply by sending a link to the video and your CV: via the Erasmus internship portal OR to Latvian Fund for Nature e-mail: [email protected]

More information about Latvian Fund for Nature: www.ldf.lv
Here you can read the stories of interns in the GrassLIFE project at Latvian Fund for Nature from 2021 to 2022: https://grasslife.lv/
For more information about the internship, please contact Internship Coordinator Nora Rustanovica: [email protected]