Investigation of relationships between fecal contamination, cattle grazing, human recreation, and microbial source tracking markers in a mixed-land-use rangeland watershed.

The United States National Forests are mixed-use lands that support human recreation and cattle grazing. Overuse by humans or cattle, however, can lead to the fecal contamination of local waterways. Until recently, the source of these contaminants was a subject of conjecture; however, microbial source tracking tools have become widely used and are proving to be a valid methodology to identify the contamination source. This study aims to analyze and model the quantity and sources of fecal contamination in the Mink Creek watershed in southeastern Idaho. The U.S. Forest Service Caribou-Targhee National Forest (USFS) manages this watershed. Previous research has indicated that some localities within the watershed exceed US EPA standards for coliform bacteria. In 2019, water samples were collected before livestock began grazing and throughout the spring, summer, and fall after livestock grazing had ended. Fourteen sites were sampled seven times during the field season, allowing the water to be analyzed for total coliforms and E. coli bacteria. Microbial source tracking techniques using Bacteroides bacteria, which are known to live in specific digestive tracks, were used to identify the source of E. coli at each sampling location. The analysis indicated that E. coli counts exceeded state regulatory limits 35% of the time. These exceedances were associated with DNA source tracking markers for humans (58.8%), cattle (5.9%), or both cattle and humans (5.9%). Unknown sources were responsible for the Bacteroides bacteria 29.4% of the time. A statistical model was developed to estimate E. coli using the datasets of microbial source tracking measures, the presence or absence of humans, cattle, the proximity of the sampling date to a holiday, and other seasonal factors. The resulting model showed good performance indices at all the 14 sites based on a K-fold cross-validation scheme (R2 = 0.83 and NSE = 0.69). The results demonstrated that E. coli exceedances have a close association with human recreation and unknown sources and negatively influenced by dissolved oxygen.

Graduate student's guide to necessary skills for nonacademic conservation careers.

Graduate education programs in conservation science generally focus on disciplinary training and discipline-specific research skills. However, nonacademic conservation professionals often require an additional suite of skills. This discrepancy between academic training and professional needs can make it difficult for graduate students to identify the skills and experiences that will best prepare them for the conservation job market. We analyzed job advertisements for conservation-science positions and interviewed conservation professionals with experience hiring early-career conservation scientists to determine what skills employers of conservation professionals seek; whether the relative importance of skills varies by job sector (government, nonprofit, and private); and how graduate students interested in careers in conservation science might signal competency in key skills to potential employers. In job advertisements, disciplinary, interpersonal, and project-management skills were in the top 5 skills mentioned across all job sectors. Employers' needs for additional skills, like program leadership, conflict resolution and negotiation, and technical and information technology skills, varied across sectors. Our interview results demonstrated that some skills are best signaled to employers via experiences obtained outside thesis or dissertation work. Our findings suggest that graduate students who wish to be competitive in the conservation job market can benefit by gaining skills identified as important to the job sector in which they hope to work and should not necessarily expect to be competent in these skills simply by completing their chosen degree path.