| Affiliations: | Aggie Research Mentoring Program |
| Project Leader: | Shishir Basant shishir.basant@tamu.edu Ecology and Conservation Biology |
| Faculty Mentor: | Bradford Wilcox, PhD |
| Meeting Times: | TBA (flexible) |
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Team Size:
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6 |
| Open Spots: | 2 |
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Special Opportunities:
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This project will expose students to several instrumentation and measurement techniques in hydrology, forestry and soil science. Additionally, this will provide an exposure to working on broad impact project and to advance critical thinking skills. The undergraduates recruited will also be given opportunity to develop individual projects (for an undergrad thesis or a professional report). Through the process, they will be mentored by a postdoctoral researcher and a final year doctoral student on the process of research and developing a complete research product. Some of the specific skills you can expect to acquire while working with us: Soil coring techniques, soil moisture measurements, sensor installations, campbell scientific datalogger operations/power setup and maintenance, basic weather /micrometeorological measurements and some basic electrical and machine skill sets.
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Team Needs:
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Preferred skill sets/experience are listed, but we understand that many undergraduates may not have such experience at this stage. If the project and the experience sounds like something you would be interested in, please reach out. – Prior experience of working in a professional setting – Demonstrated that you can take responsibilities and commit to seeing through tasks – Comfortable with outdoor work settings: such as prescribed fire, vegetation, soil, wildlife work – Experience with safely working with machines and tools (saws, chain saws, carpentry, electrical work, etc.) – Experience in laboratory settings Applicant must have a driving license with experience of driving as you will be expected to drive to field sites and on dirt roads in wildlife management areas. Awareness and regard for safety rules in work settings is a must. This includes safe/defensive driving. Students interested in pursuing a career related to hydrology/ forestry/ecohydrology are highly encouraged. If you have prior experience working in ecology/conservation, with parks/arboretum, etc., we encourage you to apply. We expect students joining our lab to be motivated towards the research we conduct, sincere and diligent towards the tasks they undertake or they have been assigned. Read below for more details. Further note about this role: A lot of our work revolves around soil sampling and soil related measurements in the lab. Even though we have successfully trained students in soil augering, sampling, root measurements – please be aware that this can be physically strenuous. Given the nature of this work, we sometimes have to be able to work in inclement weather. To apply: Send a copy of your resume with a short note describing why you are interested in this project and how this will benefit you professionally. Send to : shishir.basant@tamu.edu |
| Description | Oak savannas are an important vegetation type in the Southern USA, making up more than 120,000 km2. Over the past 150 years, these landscapes have been radically transformed by cultivation and subsequent abandonment, altered fire regimes, urbanization, and fragmentation. This altered fire regime has allowed undesirable plants to invade the understory, creating dense thickets of vegetation—a process described by some as thicketization. The overarching goal of our proposed project is to develop a better understanding of the ecohydrological implications of thicketization in oak savannas. We are particularly interested in determining if groundwater recharge could be enhanced via the creation of a more open structure. We will focus our field studies on the Post Oak Savanna ecoregion in eastern Texas. We believe that this ecoregion holds particular promise for increasing groundwater recharge at a regional scale because about one-third of its area is underlain by the deep sandy soils of the Carrizo–Wilcox recharge zone. We will employ a variety of field measurements at two locations in the Post Oak Savanna, all of which are designed to better quantify water fluxes across these landscapes (especially recharge). Using both remote sensing and hydrological modeling, we will be able to scale up our results to the entire region and apply them to other oak savannas. A secondary but very important goal of this project is to advance ecohydrology research opportunities for early- career scientists and undergraduate students. The project will support one full time post-doctoral scientist and heavily involve three Ph.D. students |