During the week of June 9th, LJEA welcomed two NC School of Science and Mathematics students participating in the 2025 Summer Mentorship program. The students are studying Data Analytics and will be helping LJEA in organizing, understanding, and presenting our chemical, biological, and physical habitat data. We are fortunate that this year's students are able to quickly understand and expand the work that was completed by our 2024 Summer Mentorship students.
This week was spent on reviewing LJEA's data, how we present that data, and the computer code and other information products produced by the 2024 cohort. On Tuesday, the students and members of LJEA's Community Science Committee met on the NCSSM-Morganton campus to answer the students' questions about our needs and our priorities. During the meeting, we were joined on-line by an NC State graduate student who will assist throughout the five week summer program.
The intent is not to have our mentees spend all their time in front of a computer screen. We believe it is important for them to see how LJEA collects environmental data and understand a bit about all the numbers they are looking at. So, on Thursday, we got the students out in the field. We went to Fonta Flora County Park to see the restoration projects that LJEA is working on to reduce erosion and improve the forest cover. During that visit, the students learned about the tools and procedures that LJEA is using to perform land surveying, forest inventory, and surveys of birds, macroinvertebrates, and other parts of the ecology.
After the visit to Fonta Flora Park, the students participated in LJEA's Stream Habitat Assessment training. They performed a guided assessment on White Creek and visiting the Linville River, learning about the eight different categories of data LJEA collects to complete a habitat assessment and got to see the differences between a small stream that was only moderately impacted by remnant hurricane Helene and the heavy impact upon the Linville river.
LJEA volunteers will meet with the students on the NCSSM-Morganton campus each Tuesday and provide a field experience each Thursday. We are excited about what the students will learn, what they will produce for LJEA, and pleased that they have already expressed interest in presenting at our next Lake James Watershed Symposium.
