Lucy Burns

Undergraduate Fellow, Forest Biodiversity Team

“I have always been a nature kid. My earliest memories are of walking around my backyard or the streets around my house. I collected cool things; rocks, sticks, bugs, you name it. I had a little box with the collection in it, a place where my deep connection to and fascination with nature lived. Outside, surrounded by trees, I feel calm like I am at home. I wanted to keep that connection as I went into college. I think to some extent, keeping those interests that you had as a kid is a way of holding onto who you are.“ 

As a lover of the outdoors, Lucy Burns decided to join Team Forest this summer, collecting tree data in the ForestGEO plot (Smithsonian Forest Global Earth Observatory).  

“I'm learning a lot of research and data collection skills, making connections with people, and learning tree identification. I think back to the first week when I could not even look at a tree and tell you what it was. Now I am in the field saying, ‘Oh yeah, this is dogwood, this is spice bush, this is hackberry.’ I feel like a scientist because we talk in codes all the time. The first time Lyle [Usdin] and Mesa [Fitzgerald] were in the field talking like that, I thought, ‘I am going to have to say that? That sounds so goofy.’”