Week 8 entry I

[Brandon Martin]

Here we are. it is already the 8th week and this internship is flying by. I cannot believe how fast everything is going. I am having a great time learning in this environment. This week I am currently working on transferring all of my files on my laptop to a desktop computer provided by Dr. Kross. This is kinda of a pain since I have been using my personal computer to do work on. Over the past couple of weeks I have noticed my ability to do things that are now expected of me having gotten a lot better. For instance, I am able to review an entire Baseline Inventory Report that I have been working in about one day as opposed to about 2-3 days. I am at the point where I just keep revising different portions of the reports that need to be updated. This morning, I finished doing final base maps that will be going into two of the reports. A typical report has about 13-20 maps that describe different things. The ones I have been working on are the photograph location for each picture, topography of parcel or section, soil of each parcel of section, existing improvements (two track ranch roads, local service power lines on or near the ranch). All of the maps are done on a base map that show the topography of the land, and then I use markers to diagram the information so that it stands out and is organized. This part of the report takes a lot of time because I have be sure to not make any mistakes that would cause me to start over. I have been using a template for each report that has similar information from a previous easement that was done by the Rancher. The next report that I am getting ready to work on does not have a template, so I am going to have to create everything from scratch, which will be my most difficult task yet. I will update my blog next week with more progress on that. As mentioned earlier, I am using a computer provided by Dr. Kross that is taking up a lot of room, so I had to build a desk in order to give myself more space. At this point, I have as much room as I can need. This allow me to be more organized because I can space things out a lot better. A new thing that I have learned is that in order for us to be able to do a conservation easement, the landowners have to own the land for one year before it can be put into easements. This creating a waiting period so people cannot take advantage of the tax credits associated the conservation easements. Owning the land for a year, requires people invest the money into that, and then allows is to weed out people who are trying to take advantage of the system.

I believe that I am going to be working for Dr. Kross for an extended period of time beyond the 300 hour requirement due to the overwhelming amount of work that is still to be done. So far, this is a great experience and I am enjoying every minute of it.