A Young Scientist's Guide To Gainful Employment

A recent article that ranked #1 on the Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America's Top Ten was led by Anita Morzillo, a former student in Fisheries and Wildlife at MSU. The article, entitled 'A Young Scientist's Guide To Gainful Employment: Recent Graduates' Experiences And Successful Strategies' is based on a workshop supported by the NASA-MSU Professional Enhancement Award Program and has some wise words for any junior researcher starting out on their academic career. It's written with ecologists and biologists in mind but much of the advice is likely to apply to other fields.

The paper is organized into four areas:

1. Self promotion. What can I do prior to and during the job hunt?
   
2. Personal considerations. How will both my professional and personal lives affect which jobs I should apply for?
   
3. The application process. What should I expect when applying?
   
4. Keeping it all in perspective. What if my application is rejected?
   

Section 1 considers publications, the importance of experiences beyond research, the 'elevator speech', getting your name recognised, and your network or personal connections. Section 2 discussed the necessity (or otherwise) of PhD and post-doctoral experience, issues around the geographic location of jobs, balancing professional and personal life, and issues regarding the careers of 'significant others'. Section 3 then addresses the job application process from learning about the process before applying to phone and on-site interviews. The final section reflects on extraneous situations such as competing against 'superstar' applicants for positions and the need for perseverance in certain circumstances.

The paper concludes:

"Since we all are responsible for taking the initiative to forge our career path, our goal was to share our perspectives on and experiences with several broad themes involved in a job search. Do not hesitate to start thinking about the job hunt early in your career as a graduate student. Each position that you consider will offer unique opportunities to build your resume or curriculum vitae, and will present personal and professional trade-offs. Take time to think about and proactively discuss both professional and personal factors, but also keep in mind that you control only so much of the process. Good luck!"

Shapefiles in Google Earth

Last week I put together a presentation about our Michigan UP Ecological-Economic Modeling project for our funding body. I thought it would be useful to demonstrate the location of our study area in Google Earth, so I set about learning how to import ESRI shapefiles into Google Earth. I discovered it's really easy.

My first stop in working this out was 'Free Geography Tools' and their series of posts about exporting shapefiles to Google Earth. From their list of free programs, first I tried Shp2KML by Jacob Reimers. Unfortunately this program resulted in some security conflicts with our network so I couldn't use it. Next I tried a second program, also called shp2kml, from Zonum Solutions and that worked a treat. Zonum have several other Google Earth tools that I'll have to try out sometime.

You can download the kml file it produced for the boundary of our study area here (right click, 'save as' or whatever). If you have Google Earth installed you can then just double click that file (once downloaded) and Google Earth will take you right there. When I first created the link above, I hoped that when you clicked on it the file would open automatically in Google Earth - it didn't. But after a little playing I found that kmz files will open automatically in Google Earth. kmz files are simply zipped (compressed) kml files - I used WinRar to zip the kml file and then changed the file suffix from zip to kmz. Click here - the study area file will open automatically in Google Earth (from Firefox at least - see note below). Sweet.

I also exported shapefiles for DNR and private industrial stand boundaries which match up nicely with spatial patterns of vegetation observed in the landscape. Obviously, I can't post these shapefiles online, but you can see evidence of land ownership boundaries in our study area right here. The light green rectangular area is non-DNR land and has been clear cut. The surrounding area is managed by the DNR (possibly selective timber harvest) - the resulting land cover from different management approaches is stark. These are the sorts of patterns and issues we will be able to examine using our ecological-economic landscape model.

[Note - When posting the presentation to our web server I also learned about MS Internet Explorer .png issues. They say they've fixed them, but there still seem to be some problems - try viewing this page in both IE and Firefox and note the difference (hover your cursor over the words at the bottom). Viewing the presentation pages in Firefox means the links to the .kmz files are active - they are not in IE. The issue arose becasue I used OpenOffice Impress to convert my MS PowerPoint file to html files.]

Columbia University Press Sale

Columbia University Press currently has a sale on. They have savings of up to 80% on more than 1,000 titles from several fields of study. I was particularly interested in their books in the Environmental Studies and Ecology section and purchased several:

• Foundation Papers in Landscape Ecology Edited by John Wiens, Michael R. Moss, Monica G. Turner, and David Mladenoff
  
• Understanding Environmental Policy Steven Cohen
  
• Environment, Power, and Society for the Twenty-first Century: The Hierarchy of Energy Howard T. Odum
  
• The Wealth of Nature: How Mainstream Economics Has Failed the Environment Robert L. Nadeau
  

Previously on this blog I reviewed another book they have on sale, Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can't Predict the Future by Orrin H. Pilkey and Linda Pilkey-Jarvis.

When I get round to reading this new batch I'll review some of these also (at first glance the Wiens et al. book looks particularly useful for any Landscape Ecologist - student, teacher or researcher). You've got up until May 31st to order yours.

Bristol, UK. Whence I came.

Amazingly it's just over a year since I arrived in Michigan and started my postdoc at MSU. Time flies when you're having fun, eh? Well, the first few months didn't fly so fast... but it's been fairly well shooting by recently. That's not to say I don't miss home everynowandthen. Especially when I see videos like this about my hometown:


[From University of Bristol and DestinationBristol]

But I do remember Bristol - it's not that sunny ALL the time. ;)

Michigan UP Seedling Experiment

I've been back from our study area in Michigan's Upper Peninsula for over a week so it's about time I posted something about what we were doing up there.

One of the main issues we will study with our integrated ecological-economic landscape model is the impact of whitetail deer (Odocoileus virginianus) herbivory on tree regeneration following cutting. Last November we spent a week planting 2 year-old seedlings in Northern Hardwood forest gaps created by selective timber harvest (like the one in the photo below).



Our plan was to return this spring to examine the impacts of deer browse on these seedlings. In particular, we wanted to examine how herbivory varies across space due to changes in deer population densities (in turn driven by factors such as snow depth).

To this end we selected almost 40 forest sites that would hopefully capture some spatial variation in snowfall and that had recently been selectively harvested. At each site we selected 10 gaps produced by timber harvest in which to plant our seedlings.

In each gap we planted six trees of each of three species: White Spruce (Picea glauca), White Pine (Pinus strobus) and Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis). We chose these coniferous species as these are examples of the mesic confer species the Michigan DNR are trying to restore across our study area, and because we expected a range of herbivory across these species.

At each site we would also undertake deer pellet counts in the spring to estimate the number of deer in the vicinity of the site during the winter (during which time the browse we were measuring would have occurred).

On returning to the study sites a couple of weeks ago we set about looking for the trees we had planted to measure herbivory and count deer pellets. In some cases, finding the trees we planted was easier said than done. We tried to get our field crews to plant the trees in straight lines with equal spacing between each tree. In general, this was done well but on occasion the line could only be described as crooked at best. Micro-topography, fallen tree trunks and limbs, and slash from previous cutting all contributed to hamper the planned planting system. However, we did pretty well and found well over 90% of the trees.

We haven't begun analyzing our data as yet, but some anecdotal observations stand out. First, the deer preferentially browsed Hemlock over the other species, often removing virtually all non-woody biomass as shown by the 'before and after' examples below (NB - these photographs are not of the same tree and this is not a true before/after comparison).





In some cases, the deer not only removed all non-woody biomass but also pulled the tree out of the ground (as shown below).



In contrast, White Pine was browsed to a much lesser extent and White Spruce was virtually untouched (as shown below).





Having a species that was unaffected by deer (i.e. spruce) often made our job of finding the other trees much easier. Finding heavily browsed Hemlock that no longer had any green vegetation was often tricky against a background of forest floor litter.

The next step now is to start looking at this variation in browse through a more quantitative lens. Then we can start examining how browse and deer densities vary across space and how these variables are related to one another and other factors (such as snow depth and distance to conifer stands).

All-in-all the two weeks of work went pretty well. There were some issues with water-logged roads (due to snow melt) meaning we couldn't get to one or two of the sites we planted at, but generally the weather was pretty good (it only rained heavily one day). I'll write more once we have done more analysis and stop here with a shot I took at sunrise as I left for home.

Earthquake hits Wolong

I'm totally behind on posting this: the earthquake that hit China earlier this week is in the region where CSIS does its research on Giant Pandas - the Wolong Panda Reserve. Two of my colleagues and friends, Wei Liu and Mao-Ning Tuan Mu, were in the region when the 'quake hit. They, along with Yu "Chris" Li who is also in the area (in the city of Chengdu) survived and are well. They are currently helping out with the relief effort - inevitably their fieldwork has been put on hold.

The 'To catch a panda' website I highlighted previously will be updated as news is received. The CSIS HELP PANDA fund, set up to enable those interested in the understanding and preservation of giant panda habitat to help the area, has been expanded to allow people to help both earthquake victims and the area. Tax-deductable donations can be made on the site.

New MSU Fisheries and Wildlife Webpage

So I'm back from fieldwork in the UP (via upstate New York). Megan (the Masters student working on our project) is still up there working hard for another week or two though. I'll write more about what we were doing (with some pictures) when I have time later this week.

In the meantime, you could checkout the MSU Department of Fisheries and Wildlife website, which has just been re-designed and went live today.