YLCC Internship Essay

My personal interest in the YLCC internship program is driven by the relationship between our national parks and environmental awareness. The national park service protects over 84 million acres and contains some of the wildest places remaining in the United States. These wild places undisturbed by man are much more sensitive to change compared to their developed counterparts. My goal for this internship is to help the park improve its environmental awareness and maintain its cultural significance.
Environmental awareness is two-fold: global climate change and resource management. Global climate change is a macroscopic view on environmental awareness and resource management is a microscopic view. I believe that the scientific research conducted

There are so many different ways to analyze and model climate change. It truly is a multidimensional problem. I think that this program is important because it’s giving those from my generation that are already interested in global climate change an opportunity to study it. As a third-year civil engineer we not only look at our projects from an engineering perspective but we also look at them from an environmental and economic perspective. For instance, cement production is responsible for 8 to 10 percent of global CO2 production. Through our research at university we have been able to minimize the use of cement by adding different industrial waste products to the concrete mix. This allows us to create a concrete that is just as strong as the original concrete with the added bonus of recycling a waste product, using less natural resources.
Resource management is an important part of the park system. If they aren’t properly managed the park loses its attraction and even its significance as a national park. These attractions include the glaciers at Glacier National Park and the historic Indian settlements of the Knife River Indian Villages among others. Protection of our parks’ resources is paramount to their