BMI Lab Manager

Job Title: BMI Lab Manager
Reports to: Science Director and Water Quality Program Director
Start Date: Approximately July 8th, applications reviewed as received
Hours: Full-time (30-40 hours/week, flexible schedule)
Rate: $26-29/hour, DOE
Other benefits: Paid vacation accrual, sick leave, family leave, health care stipend (approximately 60% of cost), flexible schedule with remote work when not in field

About Sierra Streams Institute: Sierra Streams Institute is a watershed monitoring, research, restoration and educational group based in Nevada City, California in the Sierra Nevada foothills.  Our mission is to promote scientific knowledge and stewardship of Sierra Nevada watersheds through research, restoration, education, and community science. Over the past two decades, SSI has grown to become a vitally important voice in the regional scientific community. At Sierra Streams Institute, we believe in science to work on behalf of environmental and human health. We work directly with citizen scientists to collect water quality, benthic macroinvertebrate, algae, wildlife and physical habitat data. There are numerous benefits to working with citizen scientists, including providing experiential learning to a diverse audience, fostering community members to be advocates for their own watershed, identifying streams in need of restoration, contributing baseline information to state and local agencies, and compiling and analyzing long-term data sets for streams and for studying the effects of climate change.

Job Description: The BMI Lab Manager oversees the Benthic Macroinvertebrate Lab and analytical duties. Qualifications may include but do not require expertise in benthic taxonomy, water chemistry, and statistics, but training for each can be provided. Specific duties include:

• Coordinate day-to-day BMI Lab activities, including but not limited to:
  • Volunteer workdays and new volunteer orientations
  • Prioritization and management of identifying BMI samples for different projects
  • Management of BMI Lab supplies and purchasing of materials where necessary
• Pre-sort Leviathan Mine BMI samples for quantifying restoration success to the level of order before packaging for sending to independent taxonomist.
• Work with Science Director to coordinate creek surveys in June and October, and participate in field work collecting BMI, algae, and physical habitat data.
• Work with Chemistry Lab Manager to assist with the collection and processing of bacteria samples in Lake Wildwood between May and October, as well as assist with Lake Wildwood chemistry sample analysis once a month throughout the year.
• Work with Chemistry Lab Manager to assist in managing water quality monitoring and chemistry lab tasks.
• Work with Executive Director and Science Director to enter, collate, and analyze data from BMI and WQ labs for presentation in research presentations, community shareouts, and scientific publications.
• Work with Executive Director to establish new research directions and pursue funding (through grant-writing in collaboration with other staff)