Hi, I'm Toni Lyn Morelli.
I'm a research ecologist with the Northeast Climate
Adaptation Science Center.
That means I get to study the impacts of climate change
on animals and plants in ecosystems
in the Northeastern U.S. and beyond.
I didn't always know I wanted to be a scientist.
Didn't always know what that meant.
I grew up in the suburbs and I spent my free time
in the backyard looking for rabbits and birds
and bugs to investigate and chase.
And from that my fascination with animal behavior
and ecology was born.
I worked really hard in school and took lots
of science classes.
Some of them I found a little bit boring,
but they helped me hone in on what I was most interested in.
When I went to college, I remember arriving on campus
and not really knowing what I wanted to do
except that I had a particular interest in science.
I found out that I could get a degree
in understanding animals and how they interact
with the world.
After four years in college, I went on to graduate school,
where I got to live in the rainforest
while I studied lemurs in Madagascar.
Now as a USGS employee, I get to increase
the world's understanding of the impacts of climate change
on the natural world.
I work with great people and get to do a lot of traveling
and also get to visit some of the most interesting
and remote parts of the country.
For example, I just returned from doing surveys
in Denali National Park in Alaska.
My primary field site is the Presidential Mountains
in New Hampshire, some of the tallest mountains
in the Eastern U.S.
My field assistants and I put traps out
for red squirrels there.
We're trying to understand how climate change
is impacting red squirrels' distribution.
This is particularly important because red squirrels [sound, cage rattling]
are the primary nest predator of birds
that are only able to nest in those mountains.
Once we've caught the red squirrels,
we put ear tags on them to identify individuals,
take a DNA sample, and figure out their sex and weight.
Once we release them, we get to track them
using radiotelemetry where it can figure out
exactly where they move around in the landscape
and how they change from year to year.
Sometimes we catch other animals by accident [sound, growel and hiss]
like the pretty ferocious weasel-like American marten.
In addition to being a scientist,
I'm a wife and a mom of a terrific five-year-old kid.
I also have an excellent community of friends
and family around me that help support me
and we support each other in this work.
I love my job.
Working for USGS is fantastic.
I really like working for the U.S. government
because I love the idea of being a public servant,
of using my work to help the country.
I love being a scientist.
Anything that I'm curious about, I can look into,
and it feels like a noble profession,
using my time to increase human knowledge
about the world for good.
I love being a woman in science.
Just working day to day, I can be a role model
for young women and girls.
I look forward to the day where being a female
mid-career senior scientist is not extraordinary.
I love working in the Northeastern U.S.
where I get to study the impacts of climate change
on moose and lynx in the Appalachian mountains
and then trout in cold water streams
and on the coast where sea levels are rising.
The scientists that I know love their jobs
because they're in it to make a positive impact.
We get satisfaction out of it because,
though you have to work really hard,
you get to put the time in doing good for the world.
The secret is, it does get easier.
We need more scientists like you in the world,
so go for it.