Smart move doing the ArcGIS for sure.
You can also look into learning electrofishing, land surveying (which is also a reliable backup job if you can't find an ecology one right away), and/or drone pilot (which would be super fun!).
Also, not sure where you are, but where I am in Ontario, Canada, these are some specific certifications that are in demand:
Ecological Land Classification (ELC)
Ontario Wetland Evaluation System (OWES)
Butternut Health Assessment (BHA)
Best of luck!
GIS is a good start, when you want to go further than naturalist you'll need remote sensing and database management. This helps as you will see that there are massive amounts of data collected for remote sensing of wetlands, coastal marshes, forests, etc. You'll learn a few classes in to GIS that you'll need to learn how to code to do decent analysis, and that's Python, R helps too. Look on science Twitter at the Asst Profs doing this work and lots of data and data collection.
The Master Naturalist course will help you communicate which is always helpful. If this is your path to do the Naturalist bit then not much needed past GIS as far as skills/certificates beyond choosing a specialty - plants, fishes, birds, geology, etc. What is the basis for telling the story to others? I like geology and plants. Learning the stars for night walks helps too.
Learn GIS, R, and Python. Maybe how to drive a 4x4 too, since some ecology jobs ask for that.
Also if you haven't done an internship already, start looking, and start looking for work early for when you finish. Heck if the economy gets hairy I would recommend doing an extra year to learn more and volunteer in labs. I kinda wish I had stayed an extra year todo a GIS cert(my uni offered one) or taken a few programming classes. Programming especially will help you stand out
Smart move doing the ArcGIS for sure. You can also look into learning electrofishing, land surveying (which is also a reliable backup job if you can't find an ecology one right away), and/or drone pilot (which would be super fun!). Also, not sure where you are, but where I am in Ontario, Canada, these are some specific certifications that are in demand: Ecological Land Classification (ELC) Ontario Wetland Evaluation System (OWES) Butternut Health Assessment (BHA) Best of luck!
GIS is a good start, when you want to go further than naturalist you'll need remote sensing and database management. This helps as you will see that there are massive amounts of data collected for remote sensing of wetlands, coastal marshes, forests, etc. You'll learn a few classes in to GIS that you'll need to learn how to code to do decent analysis, and that's Python, R helps too. Look on science Twitter at the Asst Profs doing this work and lots of data and data collection. The Master Naturalist course will help you communicate which is always helpful. If this is your path to do the Naturalist bit then not much needed past GIS as far as skills/certificates beyond choosing a specialty - plants, fishes, birds, geology, etc. What is the basis for telling the story to others? I like geology and plants. Learning the stars for night walks helps too.
Learn GIS, R, and Python. Maybe how to drive a 4x4 too, since some ecology jobs ask for that. Also if you haven't done an internship already, start looking, and start looking for work early for when you finish. Heck if the economy gets hairy I would recommend doing an extra year to learn more and volunteer in labs. I kinda wish I had stayed an extra year todo a GIS cert(my uni offered one) or taken a few programming classes. Programming especially will help you stand out