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Description
The summer research assistant at the Lakes of the Clouds Hut is responsible for daily operations of the acid rain and fine particle monitors at the high elevation site. The monitoring site is located at 5,050 feet on the south flank of Mount Washington in New Hampshire and is only accessible by foot. Much of the monitoring equipment must be carried to the monitoring site. Weather conditions at the site may be extreme, for example, during the summer, the temperatures may fall below freezing, it may snow on occasion, and winds have been recorded over 100 miles per hour.
The research assistant will live at the hut on a two-week schedule comprised of 10.5 days on and 3.5 days off. Room and board is paid by AMC.
Duties include the backpacking of equipment to the site at the start of the monitoring season, the set up of the site, daily set up and take down of monitors, data entry, coordination with hut naturalists on Mountain Watch program activities, laboratory analyses in the basement laboratory at the hut and final inventory and packing up of the site at the end of August/Early Sept. The summer research assistant will work closely with the research assistant located at Pinkham Notch in coordinating daily monitoring.
The research assistant at the Lakes of the Clouds Hut will also provide nightly interpretive talks to the approximate 90 guests, describing the purposes and operations of the Lakes of the Clouds hut monitoring site and the air quality issues that face open spaces and public lands.
To accomplish this, the summer research assistant will be responsible for research and study leading to an excellent and conversant understanding of the science and issues relating to rural air quality. The assistant will also study the results of AMC research undertaken since the early 1980s. The assistant will also update any public information available at the hut on air pollution and its effects and will assist the Pinkham summer research assistant in quality assurance and analytical tasks such as ozone monitor chart analyses. The summer research assistant at the Lakes of the Clouds Hut will be required to collect stream water samples and other related duties. In addition, the summer research assistant will assist in the census data collection of the endemic dwarf cinquefoil (Potentilla robbinsiana) plant.