Adrienne Lohe is a senior at Santa Clara University majoring in Environmental Science, and was an intern with the NSRWA this past summer. We asked her to write a bit about her experience.
This summer as an intern for the NSRWA, I gained valuable experience and had a lot of fun in the rivers, coasts and marshes that they protect. My first project was volunteering at an invasive species removal in Marshfield. After cutting Japanese Knotweed from the banks of the South River Park for several hours in the 100 degree day, I became aware of how committed and passionate all of the volunteers were to protecting this river ecosystem. These people actually cared about the environment around them and worked to make a change--I was impressed and knew that NSRWA would be a perfect fit for me.
After that I was excited to get started with field projects. I worked closely with ecologist Sara Grady, who led all of the research but taught me along the way so that soon the other interns and I were able to gather data on our own. We did surveys of invertebrate life in Marshfield’s Green Harbor as well as Phragmites and other vegetation surveys. This allowed us to monitor the changes in the environment in response to the changing of the tide gate. The first time we surveyed for invertebrates Sara did all of the identifying, but the next time I’m proud to say that my fellow intern Laura and I completed the whole day of work by ourselves! It was an awesome hands-on learning experience from trying not to fall down in the harbor mud to examining tiny worms under the microscope for the afternoon.
Some of my favorite projects were impoundment surveys at First Herring Brook. Kayaking around the Scituate Reservoir, we took several measurements such as depth, temperature and dissolved oxygen. It was interesting to see the differences at varying depths as warmer water on top did not mix with the colder, life-supporting water close to the bottom. As a Scituate resident, I loved working on and learning about this ecosystem that I had driven by and fished on as a kid, but knew almost nothing about. Another of my favorite projects was horseshoe crab tagging. Sara, Laura and I spent a few hours walking in the shallows of Duxbury looking for crabs. Afterwards we drilled holes in their shells to tag them and monitor their populations, which are an indicator of the health of a coast. I’ve always been interested in marine science and I loved getting to work in the ocean.
This summer gave me lots of hands-on experience in the field of environmental science, taught me a lot about scientific research, and gave me some ideas about what to do in the future. As a graduating senior this spring, I look forward to using these past few months of work as stepping stones to more work in environmental and ecological sciences.
