Forest Cook's CAS Internship with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service

In the summer of 2020, CAS trainee Forest Cook interned with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service in the Pollinating Insect Research Unit. Forest was under the mentorship of Jonathan Koch, Michael Branstetter, and Kelsey Graham. 

During his internship, Forest used selected environmental predictors to model habitat range for H. anthracinus and H. volcanicus bees, overlayed projected future habitat range with sea level rise scenarios, and distributed results to Hawaii's public for future conservation. 

Forest gained skills in field data collection, data preparation and cleaning in RMarkdown and HTML, and species distribution modeling.