Internships

Eva Jordan ’24

Major

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Project Title

Urban Biodiversity and Conservation at New York City Parks

Presentation Link

View Eva's Presentation

I worked with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation’s Natural Resources Group (NRG) to conduct an ongoing wildlife-monitoring project is assessing the habitat and hydrological connectivity within two salt marshes bisected by roads. This study will continue in the coming years after these roads have been reconstructed with environmentally minded features such as culverts and ecopassages. Monitoring before and after reconstruction will allow the NRG to assess the efficacy of these technologies in mitigating the impacts of the built environment on nature, and provide evidence to support this type of reconstruction in the future. I spent most of my time conducting fieldwork, which included setting and retrieving traps, marking and measuring diamondback terrapins and minnows, and gaining hands-on experience in saltmarsh ecosystems. I also worked with the management and analysis of our mark-recapture data. This internship was a valuable opportunity for me to become more familiar with conservation work through government organizations and to solidify my interest in pursuing ecological fieldwork. It also allowed me to further explore the intersection of ecology and engineering, which I hope to apply to my future independent research.