Summer Research Assistant - Air Quality - PNVC

The Appalachian Mountain Club Research Department operates air quality monitoring in the White Mountains and northern New Hampshire.  These include a tropospheric ozone-monitoring site and a high-elevation acid precipitation site. AMC’s research is accomplished cooperatively with institutions and agencies such as White Mountain National Forest (WMNF), University of New Hampshire (UNH), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the New Hampshire Air Resources Department (NHARD). 

Responsibilities

The AMC Research Department hires two summer research assistants to manage the set up, operation, and take down of the air quality-monitoring sites, as well as to take measurements and to compile and analyze the resulting data. The summer research assistant at the Camp Dodge/Pinkham Notch Visitor Center is responsible for weekly calibration of ozone monitors at Camp Dodge and the summit of Mount Washington.  The research assistant will be provided a living space at Camp Dodge in a large canvas platform tent.  Room at Camp Dodge and board at Pinkham Notch is paid by AMC.  

Duties include the transport of equipment to the sites at the start of the monitoring season, the set up of the sites, weekly calibration of ozone monitors, coordination with naturalists on Mountain Watch program activities, acid washing of sample bottles, laboratory analyses and final inventory and packing up of the site at the end of August/early September.  Training by NH DES Air Resources Division is provided to operate and maintain ozone monitors.  Data entry and analysis will also be required. The summer research assistant will work closely with the research assistant located at Lakes of the Clouds hut, communicating daily and coordinating transport of samples and supplies.  The research assistant may also participate in table talks and slide show presentations at the visitor’s center, describing the purposes and operations of the monitoring sites and the air quality issues that face open spaces and public lands from the vantage points of current industry, technology and public policy.  The assistant may also be required hike to remote streams for sampling and to AMC huts for interaction with Hut Naturalist....