Maps, maps, maps! My summer internship at the Deschutes Land Trust
Peter Muhitch (he/him)
Hometown: Exeter, Rhode Island
Major: Earth Systems, BS '25, MS, '26
Internship: The Deschutes Land Trust
Peter Muhitch reflects on his summer internship at the Deschutes Land Trust developing protocol to assess climate change vulnerability across large swaths of Central Oregon.
One morning early in August I woke up early and packed a lunch for a day of field work outside of Sisters, Oregon. I loaded up my car, turned on my audiobook, and entered the name of the preserve I was headed to in Apple Maps. It is hard to get a bad view while driving in Central Oregon. Right out your window is the high desert with gnarled juniper trees, sagebrush, and charming pasturelands. Beyond that, massive volcanoes tower over you in every direction. It is fortunate the views are so good because this summer as the Deschutes Land Trust’s Resilient Lands Intern I have spent many hours driving for field work and events at our many, diverse properties across Central Oregon.
Today, I was headed to Camp Polk Meadow Preserve to meet a group of land trust employees and Oregon State students to conduct soil sampling. The sampling was part of Zach Hinman’s Master’s thesis at OSU–quantifying riparian carbon and correlating carbon storage to groundwater levels and landscape restoration. I spent the morning learning about Zach’s methods, augering soil, and swatting flies. The soil nerd in me was giddy.
As the sun grew hotter, we finished the sampling and I returned to the land trust office in downtown Bend. I spent a few hours this afternoon working on my main project this summer: developing a protocol for the land trust to use to assess climate change vulnerability across their lands. This process largely entails piloting geospatial analysis workflows to make relevant maps which visualize vulnerability and resilience across large swaths of Central Oregon. It has been an excellent learning experience for me in building technical skills and in developing tools that are practical and relevant to land management.
The day didn’t stop there, as I headed back out to Sisters for a land trust tabling event at a fair organized by the Deschutes Public Library. After a few hours of talking to people about the land trust, crafting coffee filter butterflies with kids, and dodging the Sisters High School sprinkler system, a great day of work at the land trust was complete. I headed to the Deschutes County Fair in Redmond to enjoy the evening. There I met my friend Shiley, taking a day off his PCT thru-hike with his tramily. We spent the evening watching the rodeo, and it indeed was my first rodeo.
This was one of my longer work days this summer. I chose to share it because it conveniently highlighted everything that I’ve loved about my work at the land trust: combining science with land management, getting dirty in the field, learning land trust partners and scientists, having rich conversations with community members about land stewardship, and doing so in an unbelievably beautiful natural setting (with a touch of rural americana). I also wanted to highlight this day because it shows how my summer has been all about maps–maps to guide me as I drive across Oregon, maps to visualize climate vulnerability, maps to communicate information and stories about the land trust, and maps of trails on Gaia as I plan my next hike or run (okay this last example wasn’t included in the story of the day, but I also did a lot of using at maps for this purpose). Maps summarize my work, my life, and my hobbies here in Oregon. Just as maps represent the abstract and communicate a story, they have been a strong symbol of my journey and learning in the American West this summer.
