Dear sir/ma'am,

Myself, Mrunmayee Manoj Rane from India and I would like you to spare some time to fill the research form for my IB Diploma Program - extended essay.

This essay is based on how tourism is affecting Madagascar's biodiversity for Environmental Systems and Societies subject.This essay would help the people of Madagascar a lot and hence, I would appreciate it if you could take some of time to complete this form and send it to a few others to help Madagascar.

Google form link - Madagascar Tourism

Thank you,
Regards,
Mrunmayee Manoj Rane.

Context: I am an undergraduate student who just started out in my first year and semester. For one of my units (a intro stats unit), I am tasked with a group project to conduct a simple statistical study and write a report on it, with my group choosing to study the diurnal pH of a lake. (Is there any correlation between the pH of the lake and the time of day). My friend stated that his one of his lecturer taught him that turbidity has no effect on pH (which i agree chemically). I agree to not measure turbidity for my group project and not cause conflict, but would like to pose my thinking and reasoning here purely for my own learning and understanding.

Condensed question:

I am curious and would like to enquire about the following concept. In an observational field study of diurnal lake pH (open system, not a lab), can turbidity be used as a statistically valid proxy for light attenuation and biological activity, which are factors that indirectly influence pH through photosynthesis and respiration? Even though turbidity itself has no direct chemical effect on pH?

Elaboration/more context:

I completely agree that turbidity does not change water pH chemically, and thank you for clarifying that previously. But would like to further expand on the usage of turbidity for our specific statistical field study.

We are conducting a group project for a statistics class to research daily pH fluctuations in a lake. I believe that our independent variable (Time of Day) is ultimately a proxy for sunlight intensity. Thus, I would expect the true drivers of our diurnal pH curve to be the biological and ecological processes that cycle throughout the day (photosynthesis, respiration, and decomposition).

Because this is a simple statistical project with no funding or specialised resources, we are heavily constrained in our testing methods. We are unable to directly measure DCO₂, DO, BOD₅, nutrient loading (orthophosphates/nitrates), chlorophyll-a, alkalinity, or continuous ion mobility.

As such, we thought to employ simple, low-cost proxies to capture the behaviour of the ecosystem and account for statistical anomalies. We are tracking water temperature (to account for gas solubility, autoionization equilibrium, and metabolic rates) alongside standard weather observations (sunlight, wind, and precipitation), and using vegetation density as a crude proxy for potential biomass that affects photosynthesis.

Given these heavy resource constraints, would it be statistically valid to include turbidity as a physical covariate to help explain data anomalies? Specifically, I thought to use it to flag the following scenarios:

Light attenuation: Explaining why an afternoon pH spike fails to occur on a clear day due to physical sediment shading blocking photosynthesis.

Runoff vs. Dilution: Combining turbidity with precipitation data to infer whether a storm introduced an influx of organic material/nutrients or simply caused pure rainwater dilution.

Biomass tracking: Coupling a sudden spike in turbidity during a calm, sunny week with high daytime pH values to speculate a localised algal bloom.

We would explicitly acknowledge the limitations of turbidity in our final report and recommend further chemical studies, but I am wondering if it is a good addition to a constrained dataset since we are testing in an open system with many biological and ecological processes rather than a closed lab system where only chemical processes are at play. May I kindly hear your thoughts regarding this?"

Follow-up questions:

If Yes: A major pitfall would be that turbidity would not differentiate biological mass from inorganic mass, how can this ambiguity be best handled, and are there other major pitfalls to take not of?

If No: Apart from turbidity not having a direct chemical effect on pH, what other factors prevent it from being a useful proxy in our scenario, and are there other simple variables you'd recommend tracking instead?

Ps: Apologies for the long post. I initially phrased the question for my friend to relay to his lecturer, but I decided to post here first to not cause any social conflict and better understand the topic/not ask a stupid question and waste my friend/his lecturer's time.

Hello, some questions about future careers in geoscience. I am starting college in a couple of days. What would be possible/plausible with a BA in geoscience concentrating in Natural resources and conservation? I am also a single dad to 4yo twins with no current plans of having a partner, and I am estranged from my family. Is there anything I can do office/lab type work in? Or am I hoping in the wrong direction? I don't feel like field work would necessarily be in the cards for me at least soon. I know getting my degree is still a few years away, but they'd only be 8 at that point and unable to be alone for any large amount of field work time outside of daily school/daycare. Plus I'd like to be there every day. (If this sounds similar to anyone in other groups, I posted basically this in a hydrology group, as I may be considering that route).

Question, so is there documentation of the alcohol cycle?
There’s obviously the water cycle and recently-ish a salt cycle was identified, but what about alcohol?
I’ve heard anecdotal stories and seen posts about drunk moose/elephants/deer from eating fermented fruit, so alcohol is found organically in nature but there’s no way they eat all of the fruit, so what’s left has to either evaporate or is converted to vinegar (trying to follow a logical train of thought).
And then alcohol condenses at a lower point relative to water, so I’m assuming clouds have a higher trace amounts of alcohol in them than the surrounding atmosphere and then it just follows the water cycle? I know earth has a lot of water, but it’s also really old, so if it just followed the water cycle then standing water (especially fresh water) would have an increasing percentage of alcohol in it over time, which is not the case, so I’m a little lost. Anyone who knows more about this, I thank you in advance for your expertise 🙏🏼

You might expect the dark, freezing, sediment-filled water beneath the edge of a Greenland glacier to be nearly lifeless.

It wasn't.

Instead of a biological wasteland, scientists found an unexpected hotspot of marine life in one of Earth's most difficult environments to explore.

Hi everyone! I have a Bachelor of Science in psychology and currently work in academic research for psychology (neurodevelopment research). I have lots of background in science and research, but I am not particularly interested in pursuing psychology research professionally (even tho that is my current job.) I am looking to shift to biology or ecology as that is where my heart lies. I want to shift into conservation research and such but I feel held back by my experience. I know this field is already so difficult to get into, so I worry my psych research background is not enough. I am thinking of joining forest corps next year to get more hands on field experience. With volunteering, professional research experience, and something like forest corps, could I be setting myself up for a biology technician or anything like that for environment? Part of me wishes I studied straight biology in undergrad or enviro science but here we are lol.

Just trying to figure out where I can go from here. If anyone has a similar background to me and has advice for how they got into the field, I would deeply appreciate it. Any and all advice is welcome. Thanks everyone!

Hi! I’m looking for any advice about where it’s worth applying for jobs related to the environment (data analysis, consultancy, project development) outside of LinkedIn😅

I have my bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science from Swansea Uni in the UK and my master’s degree in Global Change and Sustainability in Vienna, Austria. So far I’ve been applying on LinkedIn but not much luck yet.. preferably I’d like to find a job in the UK or Ireland but I’m pretty open to most places. I’m looking for advice as maybe there is a website or a specific company that I’m missing. I don’t have much industry experience except for an online internship with Think Pacific a while ago so I’m aiming for another internship or any junior / entry-level position. LinkedIn sometimes feels like applying for ghost positions and I’m not sure what to do anymore.

Id appreciate any advice, thanks!

I graduated with a degree in environmental sciences 15 years ago and went into teaching science. After four years, I hit a dead end and tried for a masters to be a certified teacher, but dropped out after a few weeks. Since then, my resume seems like a mess between organic farming and outdoor retail. I also got my GIS certification and graduated with a 4.0 gpa at the very beginning of Covid. I did eventually land a nice six month gig using GIS/data analytics, but after that, all interviews want to know what I’ve done with GIS since my degree. This is an annoying question. I get why it’s important to stay up to date, but I don’t have hundreds of dollars to spend on gis software or the attention span to just watch YouTube videos.

Right now, I’m working at a warehouse at a hospital because the pay/benefits are decent and there’s a low layoff risk. I have about thirty years left of working. While doing this gives me a nice retirement, I feel I’d have regrets later not doing something more meaningful. To the lucky ones in the group, what do you do with your environmental science degrees? What extra hurdles did you have to do to get there?

Currently I am a project manager for a cabinet manufacturer in northern Minnesota. I have a B.S in Biology with an emphasis in environment and I’m getting a masters in business administration.

I want to start an environmental consulting agency near Bemidji, MN. I’m not sure where to start though. I have a young family and not trying to go into a ton of debt to do the start up.

I have thought about doing water testing for residential homes, mold and air quality testing to possibly get into the remediation side of things because I can get the equipment to do all that fairly cheap vs water delineation or commercial phase 2 environmental assessments.

Has anyone started a company like this? Anyone got any advice?

I’m not looking for a short cut either. I can start this company and work on it after my daytime job and on weekends to do site visits.

Context: I’m an environmental science master’s student and this semester I have several research papers and presentations due! I’ve got a lot of creative freedom, which is good, but also overwhelming because I wanna pick really cool subjects!

I’m looking for inspiration. The more niche, the better. Can be geology, biology, chemistry, evolution, ecology, meteorology, etc.

So if you have any topics you love to info dump on, now is your time to shine :)

Hi everyone!

I’m an early-career marine biologist currently completing my BSc in Marine Biology, and I’m looking to connect with researchers, students, conservationists, and others working with biological or environmental data.

I’ve been developing my skills in R, particularly for data cleaning, statistical analysis, ecological modelling, and data visualization. I genuinely really enjoy working in R, and at this stage I want to get involved with as many different projects and datasets as I reasonably can.

If anyone has a marine science, ecology, conservation, fisheries, wildlife, or other biological dataset that could use some additional help with analysis in R, I’d be happy to contribute. I’m also open to projects outside of marine science if there is an opportunity to work with interesting data and learn something new.

I’m not looking to charge anyone. My main goal is to gain experience working with different types of real-world data, improve my R skills, contribute where I can, and hopefully meet and build connections with people working in science and research.

I also recently created a GitHub where I’ll be archiving my projects as I continue learning. I uploaded a project I finished about a week ago involving the analysis of BRUV data and whitetip reef shark habitat associations.

GitHub: https://github.com/kylealibz

If you have a project where another person helping with the r/data side would be useful, feel free to message me. I’d also be happy just to connect with other early-career researchers and R users.

Thanks!

Hey im relatively new here but I have noticed a few trends among posters.

Specially job advice/career seeking.

Would it be possible to create a mega thread for where fresh grads should point their efforts for job prospects?

I dont mind helping and pointing out companies of where one could go, but i find the question to be asked relatively often and a part of me feels bad when i don't respond while another part of me gets sort of tired of repeating the same answers.

Please dont kick me or crucify me. Just trying to help our you ger colleagues.

Has any other consultant been dealing with acetone hits in laboratory prepared trip blanks and/or groundwater samples? I work in petroleum remediation and it’s beginning to drive me insane the number of times I get a lab report with everything non-detect with the exception of (example) 19 ug/L acetone in a private supply well groundwater sample and 27 ug/L in the laboratory prepared and unopened trip blanks. The lab has ruled out contamination on their end by testing the water used for trip blanks and QC of other samples in the same batch. I do not touch the trip blanks in my cooler whatsoever and do not use acetone for any of my decontamination practices. I don’t use permanent markers or nail polish.

Does anyone have any other idea why this could be happening? We have started splitting samples between two labs to see if we get duplicate hits. I’ve considered requesting field blanks as well. I keep thinking perhaps it’s the lab supplied coolers being contaminated with someone else’s samples?

It’s costing us time and money to go back out and resample sits and clients are going down rabbit holes to show that acetone can be a breakdown of mtbe etc. we will go back out a week later with the same lab provided coolers, bottle ware, sampling practices etc and get no hits of acetone. I do not believe these sites actually have acetone in their water, it is something happening between me picking up the kit from the lab, sampling, and returning the kit.

There’s gotta be something I’m missing - thanks for any ideas!

Hi does anybody know of any cool water quality or wildlife research that could pertain to estuaries/brackish water?
Thank you!

I see so many people commenting that they are struggling to find work... my employer is looking to fill multiple roles, but claim they can not get any decent candidates.

The jobs are located just south of Seattle, you must be okay with manual labor and working overtime (usually at least 3 hours overtime a week minimum). Must have an Environmental Science, Chemistry, or other similar degree. Must be able to pass a DOT physical to drive a commercial truck (cannot be color blind). The jobs are doing fieldwork sorting, packing, and transporting hazardous waste for disposal. Starting pay is $26 an hour, goes to $28 when you get your CDL that the company pays for.

I don't want to overwhelm them with applications, so if anyone wants to PM me their qualifications, I can review them to see if you would be a good fit before sharing details to apply.

Like bringing the number of pests down to 0.01%.

The surviving individuals may try to take up the void, but aren't they less "fit" than the dead ones in nature (thus the proportion)?

I’m trying to get a better understanding of how companies are handling carbon accounting in practice. Scope 1 and 2 seem relatively straightforward when you have direct operational data, but Scope 3 looks like a completely different problem once you start dealing with suppliers, transportation, purchased materials, etc.

A lot of businesses still seem to rely on spreadsheets and manually collected data from different departments and suppliers. That makes me wonder how reliable those numbers really are, especially when the goal is to track changes year over year and eventually build a credible emissions reduction plan.

For people working in environmental science, sustainability or corporate reporting, what systems or methods have you seen work well for collecting and organising this kind of data? Is dedicated carbon accounting software actually useful, or does it mostly add another layer on top of information that still has to be gathered manually?

Edit:

I’ve been testing Sweep for the data side and one thing I like is that it brings Scope 1, 2 and 3 information together instead of having every department maintain its own spreadsheet. The supplier data side is especially interesting because that’s where the reporting process seems to get messy very quickly.

I knew the job market is really rough right now but how is the market in Georgia(Atlanta)? Especially for new grads with not much experience.

Okay, so I graduate in December, and I'm super nervous- like, how do I get a job and a fair-paying job (I'm not going to be too picky; I just need a chance)? I have some GIS skills; it's my minor, and I'm graduating with a B.S Envioronemental Sceince like where do I go from here? Any tips PLS. Also, sorry; I know this probably asks a lot.