Employment!

Being a newly minted college graduate, I have been on the hunt for a good job for a long while now. I just received an e-mail today from my advisor that I've been accepted onto a project working with the Natural Resource Conservation Service. I can't really say what I'm researching but it involves taking soil samples and integrating them into an ongoing mapping project for the service. I've always been fascinated by the inner workings of the Earth and how different ecosystems process nutrients, energy, and minerals. I'm so glad to be finding success already in my field of Ecology and Forestry. It's a welcome relief. The pay is meh but I've known the people I'm going to be working for for over a year now and theyre such great folks. I urge anyone reading this who is currently out of work to never give up and always keep trying.

In other news, I stumbled across an interesting article from CBS news today on the dangers of introduced species. I've done extensive field work in invasive species monitoring, and know first hand the havoc they wreak on ecosystems, but the actual long-term damage has never been fully calculated.

This article explains in detail how introduction of a fish species to a lake not normally used to large fish species collapsed wholly in just a few years. Its surprising how quickly an ecosystem, something that takes decades to establish even in the most fertile environments, can be destroyed by a simple occurrence, such as dropping a few largemouth bass into a lake. It should teach us all a lesson to be mindful of our natural surroundings, and to be wary of what sort of pollutants we dump into our waters, as well as how our actions can affect the ecology of any environment in the long term. Give it a read, and learn a little!