Montana Ecological Monitoring Data Specialist

The Great Basin Institute (GBI) partners with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) throughout the western United States to implement vegetation monitoring programs such as the BLM’s Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring (AIM) program. The AIM program is a BLM initiative to collect field data on rangeland indicators characterizing soil, vegetation, and hydrologic resources with an overarching goal to inform land management decisions and conservation actions.

The BLM manages approximately 8.3 million surface acres of land within the states of Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The BLM is mandated to conduct land health monitoring to document effectiveness of the decisions established in its Resource Management Plans, to determine treatment effectiveness, to evaluate habitat conditions, and for other related land management purposes.  GBI seeks to fill a qualified data specialist to work at a BLM office within Montana to assist BLM staff with review and completion of Quality Assurance (QA) / Quality Control (QC) procedures for AIM datasets, provide technical support and training to field staff in the use of ArcGIS Collector and Survey123, work with BLM staff on data management and storage issues for AIM and related datasets, and complete basic analysis and reporting using AIM data as needed for completion of BLM business. All processes shall occur in accordance with the most recent versions of information posted on the BLM website (https://www.blm.gov/aim). The data specialist will work with the BLM Montana State Office Monitoring Coordinator for identification and completion of day-to-day tasks, as well as daily work directly with BLM staff and periodically participate in data analysis meetings led by Headquarters and/or the National Operations Center AIM team to share ideas and for additional support.

This position offers fulltime in-person work at one of the BLM State or Field Offices or a combination of in-person and remote work with at least one day at a BLM office in Montana once every 1-2 weeks. Additional travel will be required for training, to support field crews, and for workshops on incorporating AIM data into BLM decision making processes.

Contract Timeline: one year, 12 month term. The ideal start date is November 14, 2022 but flexible.