Madelyn's Project Page

Who:  I am from Salt Lake City, Utah. ACCESS has created amazing opportunities for me to better learn and explore my passion for science and wildlife biology. In my spare time, I enjoy running, hiking, climbing, and skiing.

My scientific/engineering interests:  I have loved biology since I took zoology and oceanography in high school. I attended a school trip to Catalina Island and fell in love with a world beyond Salt Lake City. I dream of one day traveling the world and studying its changing ecology.

Academic goals:  I am a Biology major. I hope to continue working in my ACCESS lab and would love to publish before graduating. After earning my undergraduate degrees, I plan to attend graduate school to pursue a PhD in Biology.

Career goals:  One day I want to travel the world, study animals, and create better ways to preserve the world’s natural beauty. I love learning about animals and their interactions, ecosystems, and the biosphere. In my future career, I look forward to inspiring the next generation biologists.

Salt Lake City is a growing city surrounded by wildlife that is constantly having to adapt  to this growth. A major concern is how human interaction is affecting wildlife behavior. Using  camera traps, pictures can be used as data and sorted to see any changes in temporal activity  behavior. I had the opportunity to set up cameras, sort pictures, assess data, and write a grant  proposal. I mainly focused on the Weekend Effect, which assessed how humans interactions on  weekends vs weekdays may affect wildlife behavior. The findings were surprising because most  animals interacted the same on weekdays and weekends, even with the higher traffic of humans.  This result suggests that we may not need to make any changes to highly human traffic areas.  Continuing this research will help the future of wildlife as Salt Lake City continues to change  and grow.