independent plant project within the NPS for grad school?
as the title suggests, im looking for ideas for an independent project that will solidify skills for a potential graduate program in ecology next year. currently, i am an NPS biological science technician whose work mainly centers around invasive plant management and restoration/conservation.
i am unfortunately micromanaged and not given much office time. there are GIS layers with invasive plant data that havent been updated in years, but again i am not sure i would be able to talk to my boss and receive office time to update them.
should i collect my own field data and somehow find a way to interpret it in GIS or R?? i am at a loss because i genuinely feel like a laborer (which is a perfectly respectable career) but i did not join the NPS to be just that; i want to work with hard scientific data and be able to put GIS/R work on my resume like a real ecologist. we do standardized butterfly surveys which is the only task that we are given which involves actually writing temperature, species, quantity, etc data down.
is the only solution to talk to my boss and try to make them see that it is a beneficial solution for both parties, me and the National Park, to receive designated office time working with field data? i have done independent capstone projects in my Intro to GIS and Conservation Biology classes, but that is the extent of my experience. although previously, i would create polygons on GIS that correlated with each day’s herbicide treatment data at a state park. i want to do grad school in the future and i want to be accepted without applying to 30+ schools, so now is the time to make sure i am gaining skills.
any insight is appreciated!