National Park Service GIS Internship

Overview: Organ Pipe Cactus N.M. (ORPI) is located in the heart of the Sonoran Desert and encompasses 500 square miles of wilderness borderlands. It is surrounded by protected federal and tribal areas in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. The monument contains diverse desert habitats and terrain, several endangered wildlife species and rich prehistoric and historic cultural landscapes. Accurate, well-documented and timely spatial data management is especially important at ORPI due to the dynamic, and sometimes controversial, nature of resource protection on the international border. The goal of this internship is to provide operational support for development of improved geospatial data collection, stewardship and dissemination practices.

Position Responsibilities: The GIS intern will work with natural and cultural resource management staff on migrating legacy datasets to NPS Standard geodatabases with appropriate attributes and metadata, as well as updating features using base maps, GPS or imagery as needed. Sensitive cultural resource data will require the intern to use secure practices. The intern will also assist staff in developing web and mobile mapping workflows for several assessment & monitoring protocols related to wildlife, vegetation, wilderness, and cultural resources. This will include testing spatial accuracy of data collection methods using GNSS receivers at control points. Additional tasks may include working with visitor and resource protection staff on web maps, story maps, and Park Atlas applications.

Qualifications: The candidate should have a strong foundation in GIS fundamentals and experience with ESRI ArcGIS software and extensions. Applicants should possess practical knowledge of geodatabase design and understanding of geographic coordinate systems, projections and transformations. Familiarity with GNSS data collection, web map creation and mobile GIS applications preferred. The position requires good communication skills, attention to detail, and the ability to work both independently and collaboratively. Although most of the work (approximately 80%) will occur in a climate-controlled office, field data collection activities may involve hiking in rugged desert terrain and extreme temperatures. Shared housing will be provided at the monument headquarters residence area which is located 32 miles from the nearest small town, and 150 miles from the nearest urban areas (Phoenix and Tucson).

Please apply here:https://www.suu.edu/iic/internships/