Emma Rosenau has settled into her new digs at Death Valley National Park Headquarters to assist the Mojave Colorado Deserts Biosphere Region (MCDBR) with coordinating and communicating with partner organizations. The MCDBR includes North America’s hottest, driest, and lowest places as well as alpine environments rising to over 11,000 feet. This 25-million-acre landscape is home to thousands of desert-adapted plant and animal species, generations of human history, and opportunities for sustainable economic development in rural communities. A mosaic of public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, Navy and Air Force installations, California Parks, three national parks, Timbisha, Cahuilla, Quechan, Chemehuevi, Mojave, and other tribal lands, as well as private lands, offers a unique design for collaborative conservation.
Emma is a graduate of the University of Vermont, where she studied environmental science with minors in GIS and emergency medical services. Her undergraduate thesis studied invasive plant management in the Sonoran Desert. Her other research includes spatial deforestation-disease relationships in Bangladesh and developing GIS tools for sustainable agriculture. She is excited to be back in the desert and is keeping her eyes peeled for a Mojave desert tortoise.
The National Park Service Scientist-in-the Park biosphere internships offer the rare developmental opportunity to work with state, federal, local, and tribal agencies as well as nongovernmental organizations, universities, and other private entities in a collaborative setting. Biosphere regions gain valuable staff support in return. The SIP program is a collaboration between the NPS, Geological Society of America, and Stewards Individual Placements Program.
