Kelsey Biondo is a 2011 Penn State University graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree in Earth Sciences and minors in Geography and Science, Society, and Environment of Africa. During her time at Penn State, she took a semester studying abroad in South Africa, where she assisted her Fire Biogeochemistry professor with a carbon storage study, collecting data in the field and writing lab reports, as well as writing a personal independent studies paper. She also assisted an Eastern Cape Parks Board ecologist with his personal plant project. She served as a research assistant for a Penn State graduate student’s thesis on Fire Ecology at Lassen Volcanic National Park in California, collecting tree core samples and shrub cross-sections in order to assess the spatial relationship between the two from records and aerial photos taken 40 years ago to data collected today.
Kelsey grew up in Moscow, Pennsylvania and currently lives in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. She commutes to the EPCAMR office on Wednesdays for her internship hours. She is very bright, great to be around, has a tremendous amount of internship experience on her resume, and has previous experience with GIS.
Kelsey will assist EPCAMR Program Manager, Mike Hewitt, with the creation of a 3-D Mine Pool Model in EarthVision for the Bernice Mine Pool Basin in the Loyalsock Creek Watershed. This experience will increase her skill level in this innovative modeling software, not commonly used by nonprofits, to perform hydrogeological investigations.
“Kelsey’s knowledge and skill level in GIS will make it very easy for Mike to train her,” mentioned Robert Hughes, EPCAMR Executive Director. “She comes to EPCAMR this summer with a resume that floated well above the rest, due to her initiative and foresight to have participated in more than one internship prior to and after graduating from Penn State.”
Already, Kelsey has had the opportunity to assist the EPCAMR staff with monitoring boreholes to obtain water elevations of the underground mine pools flowing beneath the Lackawanna Valley. She also received training in how to properly install and plant trees and shrubs at the Huber Breaker Miner’s Memorial Park, where EPCAMR is assisting the Huber Breaker Preservation Society to reclaim a 3-acre abandoned mine land lot into a public park in Ashley, Pennsylvania. This training came from the Appalachian Coal Country Team, through a grant from GROASIS Waterboxx.
Kelsey stated, “I’m excited to help EPCAMR conserve the environment and learn more about what we and common citizens can do to remediate these AMD discharges.”
Kelsey working on the 3-D Mine Pool Model in EarthVision
You must be logged in to post a comment.