World View Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 28)

Working Vacations SCIENCE FOR GOOD A volunteer can take a bear’s temperature or test the Arctic peat by David Taylor J anet Sandberg is an obstetrics nurse who has volunteered for 10 projects with EarthWatch. She didn’t want to go too far on her first trip, so the Washington, D.C. resident joined a team tagging black bears in the mountains of North Carolina. She wanted to use her vacation time to learn something new and to make a contribution. She spent three weeks in a tent, with the small team catching, tagging and weighing bears before releasing them. Each day Sandberg hiked up to five miles to check lures set in the forest, to see if any had restrained a bear. When they found one, the principal investigator would dart the bear. ey the team would wait until the bear grew drowsy, the move in fast. “We tried to work very quickly,” Sandberg recalls. ey gave each bear a lip tattoo and a collar and measured the width of its paw. “Since I was a nurse, I got the job of taking their rectal temperature.” ree years later Sandberg did more extensive hiking for a grizzly project in Montana. It was another bear census, in this case, Glacier National Park. Sandberg later received reports from the principal investigators on both projects, a standard practice for EarthWatch. “You get feedback so you know how your work helped,” she says. Her projects have grown more adventurous, but Sandberg has never been daunted by the logistics of getting to her studies. For a study of climate change in Arctic Canada, she flew to Winnipeg and then arranged a sleeper berth on a two-day train ride north through Manitoba to Churchill, on Hudson Bay. On the train she met several people who would be on her EarthWatch team. e study involved visiting several types of peat sites regularly, assessing the vegetation, taking samples back to 28 Spring 2008 Ellen Wang EarthWatch

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of World View Magazine - Spring 2008

World View Magazine - Spring 2008
Contents
From the President
Lafayette Park
Your Turn
Gallery
Note to Readers
Introduction to the Issue
Engaging Masons
Commentary
Letter from Guatemala
Links of a Chain
Gallery
Science for Good
Letter from Jima
Another Country
Letter from Accra
Community News

World View Magazine - Spring 2008

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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/worldview/summer09
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/worldview/spring08
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/worldview/winter07
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/worldview/fall07
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