For my practicum I worked as an intern for the City of Rockville Department of Public Works under Heather Gewandter. My task was to develop a survey tool for non-native and invasive (NNI) plant species within the city's parks. For the first portion of my time, I looked through plans of other cities and counties to get an idea of how it's done and to possibly just adapt another plan to make my job easier. Nothing that i found seemed to fit well due to the budget limitations I was dealing with. My work was all based on volunteers, so I had no budget to work with at all. After reading, Heather and I went into meetings with park superintendents, contractors, and well established volunteers to get an idea of what they wanted to get done. During those meetings I learned a lot about what species seemed to cause the biggest problems within the parks. I developed a top 20 list of species to look out for and to 100% include on my survey. Some of the highest priority species include: porcelain berry, vine honeysuckle, bush honeysuckle, Japanese knotweed, bamboo, and kudzu. I developed a series or questions for each species that asked general questions like how many/how much and specific locations. I gave these questions to the GIS (geographic information system) experts at the City of Rockville. They returned a survey that can be opened through a phone app called Survey123. In the app it looks a lot like any gps system with minor visual differences. This app allows for a surveyor to trace a survey area by step. In this survey area, the surveyor is asked the questions that I developed for each species. The responses were logged into a locational database that allows the City to determine what to do next. My job was not to get rid of the NNIs, just to figure out what was there in the easiest way possible. The survey was completed at the beginning of the fall semester and I went up one evening to test it out. I am unsure if the survey has been put into use yet due to the cold winter weather, although I am hoping that it will see some action this spring/summer.
I was luck enough that my father works for the City of Rockville, so he informed me of the internship available there. I interviewed with Heather, although I think it was more of a formality since there were no other applicants. I am very thankful for the experience and the time I spent there even though it is not my target area of interest and hasn't changed my academic/career plans. My knowledge of NNIs going in was almost non existent and I've definitely learned a lot. I am definitely not an expert, but I can confidently say that I know more about the problem and the prevalence within Maryland. I park in Terrapin Trail garage and just next to the bridge over the stream I can see porcelain berry, ranked on the top of our list for most problematic. One interesting reason that NNIs spread so far is contamination from landscaping tools. Most contractors do not clean their tools or mowers, so even a little bit left over on the blades can be enough for a species to transfer between sites. I've never had a particularly strong interest in NNIs, but I'm still happy with my experience and what I've learned from it. If any SGC freshman/sophomores are looking for an internship, I'm sure that Heather or someone else at the City would love to have an intern, so feel free to reach out to pw@rockvillemd.gov.