Green Careers: Wildlife Biology

Passionate about protecting animals and their habitats? Curious about different animal species and the complex relationships that make up an ecosystem? You might find your calling as a wildlife biologist. Stay tuned this week for more green career profiles. If you haven’t already, take our quiz to discover which eco-profession could offer the best fit for you.

Green Careers: Wildlife Biology

Wildlife biologists research the characteristics and habitats of animals. Some do primarily office work, but if you’d rather work outdoors, check out field biologist or research biologist positions, which involve studying species’ feeding, mating, and/or social habits in their natural habitats. Fieldwork could also include collecting specimens, which the researcher will take back to a lab. There, he or she might dissect dead animals to understand their anatomy or how parasite might be affecting a wildlife population.  Lab work could also entail data analysis using computer software.

Green Careers: Urban Farming

For Green Lifers seeking to align their career compass, we've dedicated this week to profiling different eco-professions. Yesterday we learned about environmental journalism. If you took our quiz on Monday and scored mostly b's, then read below to learn more about urban farming, your green career fit.

Green Careers: Urban Farming

Urban farmers grow, process, and distribute food in or around a city, allowing its residents easy access to fresh, seasonal produce. Some farmers raise animals, such as chickens or fish. Often found on rooftops, patios, formerly vacant lots, and even indoors, urban farms can play a crucial role in improving food access and food security in underserved neighborhoods with few grocery stores. Farms also add greenery to stark cityscapes; reduce harmful runoff; and help counteract "urban heat islands" —  metropolitan areas that, due to human activity, are significantly warmer than nearby rural communities. Community farms can provide income and build job skills for disadvantaged, at-risk youth.

An urban farmer’s day usually begins early in the morning and could include feeding animals, delivering food to restaurants and caterers, selling food at farmers’ markets, bookkeeping, marketing to potential clients — and of course, watering seedlings, fertilizing, weeding, planting, and harvesting. Some urban farmers are involved in local food justice advocacy and policy, which might involve planning and participating in meetings.

Quiz: Which Green Career is Right for You?

It's never too early or too late to launch a new career. Whether you’re a student stumped about your post-grad future or a professional stuck in a mid-career rut, our green career series will help you find your path. This week, we’ll outline job requirements and highlight training programs and internships that can help you build the skills and network you need to jump-start your career.

Still not sure which professional path to pursue? Take our short quiz to learn which eco-friendly gig might be the best fit for your personality.

Quiz: Which Green Career is Right for You?

1. Close your eyes. Imagine your ideal work environment. What are you doing and how are you dressed?
   a. Backpacking through southern California’s San Jacinto mountains, in full hiking gear, chronicling your trek through a video and blog post.
   b. On a rooftop garden or greenhouse, wearing your trusty jeans, t-shirt, tennis shoes, gardening gloves, and sun hat.
   c. Bobbing on a boat out at sea in a t-shirt, shorts, and sandals, studying orca social structure.
   d. In a corporate office advising business executives, wearing a button-down shirt, skirt/slacks, and dress shoes.
   e. In your office, dressed in a smart suit as you write a legal brief for your latest case, this time involving a group of families with asthma caused by a local coal plant.
   
   
2. Quick! Classes are filling up, and you can only squeeze one elective into your schedule next term.  What do you sign up for?
   a. Journalism/communications
   b. Agriculture/botany
   c. Biology/ecology
   d. Business/marketing
   e. Law

App Obsession: Commute Greener!

Whether you live in the spacious, outlying suburbs of Los Angeles or find yourself squeezed in between briefcases and sports coats during rush hour in Manhattan, there's no doubt that every one of us leaves some type of carbon footprint as we travel from home to work. Perhaps the most common is the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the vehicles we drive and the taxis we take. The question is -- how much? We should definitely be conscious of the decisions we make during our commute and how it affects our planet. And with the Commute Greener! app, now we can. But smartphone users beware -- this app isn't only for vehicle or phone owners. Whether you utilize public transportation systems, walk, or ride your bike to and from work or school, this application, which is also available on the web, not only gives you an assessment of how green you are, but how you can continuously reduce your carbon footprint and encourage others to participate in the cause.

Ideal and convenient for spreading awareness about how our everyday decisions affect the earth, Commute Greener is a free application that you can download onto your phone as well as sign up for on the web. After creating an account complete with username and password, Commute Greener helps you track and reduce your carbon footprint in the following ways.

DIY 3D Picture Frames: Think Inside the Box!

The old adage goes that a picture is worth a thousand words; but what about the details that are not captured by the shutter button? Perhaps you've saved a map from every National Park you've visited or you've collected pressed leaves and flowers to mark seasons of your backyard organic garden. But if over the years your memory box has slowly turned into six bins filled with sentimental knickknacks that you'd rather not send to the landfill, it's time to breathe them back into vitality! 

Joseph Cornell, an American sculptor and one of the pioneers of box art, assembled amazing pieces of artwork in glass boxed frames, also known as shadow boxes. Inspired by fragments of beautiful and precious objects, Cornell artfully placed bric-a-brac and photographs in boxed frames. You can follow in Cornell's footsteps by creating unique art to preserve memories that photographs can't otherwise bring to three-dimensional life. At the same time, you can also dispel the myth that shadow boxes are only for the display of insects and bugs!

Here's what you will need:

Back to School: Internships and Extracurriculars

It's almost time to dust off that backpack and head back to campus. We've got a week's worth of tips to get you excited about a green education.

Tip #4: Go Beyond the Classroom

It's up to you to make the most of your education and to shape that experience to help you meet your goals. Luckily, there are plenty of people and programs that can help you do that. Look for internships, fellowships, or extracurricular activities that allow you to hone your skills and — ideally — help make the world a better place. Simi Olabisi used her senior project to make a difference by creating solar-powered incubators for infants in the developing world. Victoria Pan started a recycling club at her high school. Joaquin Sosa scored the Best Internship on Earth and spent the summer hiking, rafting, and exploring the outdoors with children from the Sierra Club's Inner City Outings program. How will you take your environmental passion beyond the classroom?

READ MORE:

Organic Farming Opportunities

VIDEO: What Makes a Cool School?

Green Your Future: National Park Gigs

Stunning Time-Lapse Photography of Yosemite

An amazing time-lapse photography video of Yosemite National Park is bringing international attention for photographer Shawn Reeder of Bishop, California.

The two-year project, Yosemite Range of Light, uses nearly 7,000 high-resolution still photos to create an inspiring vision of light and granite, capturing rolling cloud formations and the rainbow-lit waterfalls of Yosemite.

Reeder first came to Yosemite after winning a local waiter contest where he grew up in Maryland. First prize was a trip to Napa Valley wine-country, but the 18-year-old convinced the prize committee to offer a change of venue. Choosing Yosemite as his destination instead, he brought along his best friend, who happened to have a camera. . . .

Q & A with Garbology Author Ed Humes

Sierra magazine recently sat down with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward Humes to talk about his new book, Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash (Avery, 2012).

SIERRA: Is there a way that we can change today's convenience mindset of disposable everything and come back to a society with less waste?

Edward Humes: J. Gordon Lippencott, the father of corporate branding, gave us the philosophical statement of what the economy would look like after WWII. It was based on getting people to violate their most basic instinct of survival — to be thrifty — and [embrace the idea] that it was a good thing to get rid of perfectly good usable products and replace them with something new. That was the core of this new economy of abundance. It’s an illusion that things will never run out. We are an experiment on waste as the driver of prosperity. 

Well, we do all seem to want to have the most up-to-date technologies. How can we change that?

With the up-to-date technology of days gone by, you could go to the store and buy a television set and bring it home and you could be assured that if something in it failed or some component was developed that was superior, it could be upgraded. There was a built-in longevity to a lot of our products that has gone away. We’ve accepted this idea that durable goods are no longer durable.

What is the most shocking thing that you discovered?

The whole idea that waste has become such a big part of our economy — that it is our top export. Scrap paper and scrap metal are our highest volume exports. We send more of that to China than anything else. They make stuff out of it and sell it back to us. That casts us in the role of China’s trash compacter.

Test Your Bike IQ: How Much Does it Cost?

You know it. You love it. The bicycle is a clean machine in a carbon-fueled world. To celebrate Bike to Work Week and National Bike Month, we put together a quiz to test your transportation IQ.

Q: On average, the annual operating cost of a car is $8,220. How much does it cost per year to maintain a bike?

A) $308

B) $3,020

C) $20

Test Your Bike IQ: If They Build It...

You know it. You love it. The bicycle is a clean machine in a carbon-fueled world. To celebrate Bike to Work Week and National Bike Month, we put together a quiz to test your transportation IQ.

Q: Biking and walking are popular modes of transportation — about 12 percent of all trips made in the U.S. are by bike or on foot. What percentage of federal transportation spending funds bike and pedestrian infrastructure?

A) 12 percent

B) 1.6 percent

C) 75 percent