Nashua student assesses storm damage in Vermont

LYNDONVILLE, Vt. – Joshua Grant, of Nashua, a senior at Lyndon State College, spent his summer walking streambeds as part of an internship with the Friends of the Mad River. The environmental science major was granted a “Vermont Recovery” internship through Vermont Campus Compact. He helped organize and lead volunteers in conducting a visual assessment of the Mad River watershed. The compact placed 13 college students with organizations such as the American Red Cross, Vermont’s Irene Recovery office and regional recovery groups across the state. They have taken on a variety of projects that range from working directly with flood survivors to documenting changes to local rivers to improving emergency response plans. Grant is experienced in water ecology projects, having spent the last two summers interning with Trout Unlimited on a habitat recovery project in the Upper Connecticut River. “Connecting all the dots from my undergrad environmental studies has amplified the importance of the water that flows all around us,” Grant said. Grant, other interns and volunteers walked tributaries off the Mad River from their “confluence to their source,” he said, to “collect data on incisions in the flow channel, slumps (erosion) on the banks and wood jams within the flow” caused by Irene or other storms. “The physical attributes of these features are measured and photographed,” he said.