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Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring
Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring
If you're from the West or have lived in a Western state, you're probably familiar with the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM administers nearly 250 million acres of public land nationwide. In technical terms, that is a whole lot of dirt.
Public land management agencies require reliable and consistent quantitative data on the status, condition, and trend of natural resources on public lands. GBI partners with the Bureau of Land Management to advance acquire these data by implementing the Assessment Inventory and Monitoring (AIM) Strategy, a national program that sets rigorous standards for data collection for use across jurisdictions and agencies. Data collected documents changes in resource condition over time and informs decision making at the landscape scale.
Want to know exactly what you'll be doing every day?
Take a look the following monitoring manuals detailing the AIM core methods that you'll be implementing on each study plot.
The BLM has also created some videos and review materials that can be helpful for familiarizing yourself with the protocols of your project. The concepts in these videos will be thoroughly covered during training, but feel free to take a look if you are interested.
To learn more about AIM, you can visit the website set up by the BLM to explain the program here. For a quicker rundown on AIM, checkout the introductory videos below.
Here are some introductory videos to help familiarize yourself with the basics of terrestrial AIM:
A Day in the Life of a Terrestrial AIM Crew
A Day in the Life of a Terrestrial AIM Crew
A candor laden description of a day in the life of AIM
by Molly Nagle
The Assessment, Inventory and Monitoring Program is not a job that is easy to explain to your friends and family. If you are a Nurse, everyone knows the general picture of what your day to day life looks like. Being an AIM field technician that takes more explaining.
While working for AIM, you are essentially a land surveyor. Crews of three people typically spend six days in very remote areas of BLM land. AIM has many different protocols, so while you and your team collect the same data at each plot, each person only does a given task a few times per hitch. Typically each crew completes 1 or 2 plots a day. After finishing the days plot(s), the crew will either drive to the next plot, finish entering data, or both. Plots are often very spaced out geographically, so there is always work to do while driving such as identifying unknown plants or checking data. While camping you see beautiful, nearly untouched landscapes, fiery sunrises and unforgettable wildflowers. There is typically plenty of free time in the evenings to read, cook, go on a hike, or practice an instrument. The other two days of hitch are spent in the office entering data that was not completed in the field, completing QC checks, and submitting it to your Project Manager. Like many field projects, working for the AIM program has its rewards and challenges.
You get out of AIM what you put into it. There are SO MANY resources and opportunities to learn more about the ecosystem, local flora and soil types. AIM is exceptionally valuable because you and your crew are adding to an incredibly comprehensive data set that is already being used to make land management decisions all over the western United States, and will continue to be a resource to manage and protect our public lands.
AIM Submissions for the GBI Photo Contest
AIM Submissions for the GBI Photo Contest
GBI has a monthly photo contest where all employees can submit photos from the field. Winners win GBI swag, a shout out on social media, and a choice of Patagonia apparel. If you are interested in participating in the contest, visit our Instagram for more information. Check out past submissions above for inspiration in your upcoming season!
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