And i’m wrapping a soft-money postdoc in August after two seasons running LI-6800 gas exchange and PAM chlorophyll fluorescence across 12 alpine plots in the San Juans to link stress physiology with community turnover, and I’m weighing state agency or NGO roles versus another academic contract. Do agency/NGO positions let you keep hands-on physiology tied to biodiversity outcomes, or does the work skew to permitting/report writing — any realistic takes on field time, pay bands, and how often you still touch the data?
At a state natural heritage program I kept about 30% of my time on LI‑6800/PAM by pitching it as “restoration performance metrics” and baking an MOU with a nearby lab into the position so equipment access was guaranteed. Look for “research scientist” or “applied ecologist” roles on https://www.usajobs.gov and ask in the interview about percent time for monitoring and who owns the gear. If you want to publish quickly or try new methods, another academic contract is smoother; agencies trade reviewers for stakeholders.
I kept LI-6800/PAM in the mix at a state parks agency by writing a “climate adaptation monitoring” module into a thinning project and budgeting instrument time, plus an interagency loan for the 6800 and a cross-walk to NEON protocols (https://www.neonscience.org). The trick was tying leaf-level metrics to decisions (e.g., “treatment efficacy” thresholds) and getting that into my work plan — like sneaking spinach into the lasagna. Caveat: field time swung a lot with fires and reporting cycles, so have a back-up dataset, @OP.