Using a GPS device, Hassan Farah and Marcel Adamczyk gather information on the rugged terrain of Mount Lemmon's Molino Basin. The boys are taking part in a weeklong Environmental Research Camp under the auspices of the University of Arizona Department of Geography and Regional Development.

A.E. Araiza / Arizona Daily Star

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It's not everybody's idea of the ideal science job, but the 11 budding scientists tromping up the dusty hills of Molino Basin Tuesday morning as the temperature headed toward 100 weren't complaining — much.

Anish Dayal, a 13-year-old Orange Grove Middle School student, was, however, looking forward to the lunch break minutes into his quest to map the vegetation on the slopes, and that was before he planted his foot too close to the clump of Spanish bayonet cacti known as shin daggers.

They should call them "leg daggers," said Anish, who also noted that the needle and fiber of the plant can be used as an emergency suture kit.

No stitching was necessary, though, and Anish plugged on behind teammate Maggie Lopez, 14. Maggie pretty much bounced up the hill as she counted off the 10 meters between sites to be measured, mapped and entered findings into a hand-held data collector plugged into a global-positioning device.

Welcome to Environmental Research Camp, a weeklong summer science program of the University of Arizona Department of Geography and Regional Development — part of the UA's Arizona Youth University.

Maggie, who is headed to University High in the fall, won a scholarship to Youth University when her Our Mother of Sorrows Science Olympiad team won top honors in the Arizona competition.

She's interested in pursuing chemistry or biology but sees the benefit in this exercise. "It's exposing me to new sciences and different fields of work I could choose to go into," she said.

The students' work will be used by the U.S. Forest Service to measure the effectiveness of restoration techniques used after the 2003 Aspen Fire in this oak woodland between 5,000 and 6,000 feet up the Mount Lemmon Highway, and in the conifer forests they will visit today and Thursday, said Devin Quintana, geographic-information systems specialist with the Coronado National Forest.

"They're giving us a lot of help," said Quintana. "It's hard to get people out here, day to day, on the land."

John Baldridge, the geography graduate student who led the group, said it was an easy crew to teach.

"It's remarkable how short a time it took to go through the training on Monday," he said.

"And it's really gratifying that they're interested in doing some work that has to do with the environment, because, quite frankly, we're going to need their help in the future."

Anna Guerrero and Brooke Teufel, both 13 and also members of the Science Olympiad team from Our Mother of Sorrows, said they plan to become environmental engineers.

Teammate Sabrina Herman, also 13, has a different goal, from an earlier influence.

"I'm going to be an aerospace engineer, like my daddy," she said.