The Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation at Virginia Tech is hiring a Project-Research Manager. This position will be funded by a newly acquired Department of War project entitled, Evaluation and validation of vegetation, fuel, and fire behavior tools and technology in hardwood-dominated forest ecosystems of Virginia and the eastern United States. The project is being led by Dr. Adam Coates and includes Drs. Carrie Fearer, Verl Emrick, and Mark Ford as Co-PIs.

Goals for this project include:

Inventory of fuels, using traditional transect methods and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), throughout hardwood-dominated locations in Virginia, including the Department of War installations and bases and the George Washington-Jefferson National Forest
Investigation of TLS metrics for the calculation and determination of unique wildlife habitat metrics
Utilization of fuels inputs from this region in fire behavior modeling
Creation of monitoring protocols that can be implemented to advance fuels monitoring and management across the Commonwealth

Required Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree in Forest Resources or a similar discipline
FFT2 Wildland Firefighter certification
Experience in field sampling and crew supervision
Strong written and verbal communication skills
Strong analytical skills, including the use of statistical software (R, JMP, SAS, etc.)

Preferred Qualifications

Master in Forest Resources
Experience in field sampling and supervision of a team (crew)

Project-Research Manager

Virginia Tech

Blacksburg, VA, USA