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The AHA Scholarship is a monetary scholarship available to all students applying for any AHA study abroad program. Individual scholarships are available and range from $500-$3,000; the amount awarded will vary depending on an applicant’s:
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PLEASE NOTE: In order for a scholarship application to be considered, students must complete their AHA program application by the scholarship deadline. This includes submitting the application essays, two references, and transcript(s).
Eco-Excellence
They all grew up immersed in nature: catching frogs, climbing rocks, diving reefs, combing beaches, camping out. Now, they’re all committed to studying and restoring the natural world, each in his or her own way. For Justin Conner, that means investigating the chytrid fungus and other threats to amphibians. Allison Stringer’s ecosystem studies have taken her from Chile to Siberia. Elliott Finn spent a summer in Washington, D.C., learning about environmental policy and national politics in Senator Jeff Merkley’s office. Katlyn Taylor’s love of wildlife has taken her to an elephant sanctuary in Nepal and whale watching on the Oregon coast. As for Jake Tepper, researching coral reefs is how he plans to help save these fragile marine communities.
Here are the stories of five Oregon State University student researchers who are giving everything they’ve got to heal a planet in peril.
Amphibians are crashing.When manatees and alligators are members of your backyard ecosystem, it’s like living with a ready-made science project.
There’s still hope.Siberia seldom tempts Western travelers to explore its vast taiga forests and endless permafrost — unless that traveler happens to be Allison Stringer.
Blanket solutions aren’t the answer.What runs through the life of author Norman McLean is a river. In the life of Elliott Finn, it’s a plant.
OMG, so much science!Katlyn Taylor’s life has bumped into practically every phylum of the Animal Kingdom. Ask her how she got into science, and she’ll spin a narrative that spans sea lemons, orphaned chickens, 4-H rabbits, endangered Asian elephants, gray whale migration, sea lion pups, the genetics of microbacterial phages and the coloration of sea stars.
Coral reefs are dying.When Jacob (Jake) Tepper was an eighth-grader, he and his dad traded in their 20-gallon saltwater aquarium and transferred its inhabitants — an anemone and a pair of clownfish — to a spacious 50-gallon reef tank.
Jake Tepper: “Coral reefs are dying.”
Jake Tepper wants to find a way to reverse the decline of coral reefs around the world. (Photo courtesy of Jake Tepper)
When Jacob (Jake) Tepper was an eighth-grader, he and his dad traded in their 20-gallon saltwater aquarium and transferred its inhabitants — an anemone and a pair of clownfish — to a spacious 50-gallon reef tank. They added corals and a porcupine pufferfish who begged for food by squirting water at passersby. And then there were the stowaways: bristle worms, snails and other ocean organisms that hitch a ride on the “live rock” that aquarium hobbyists often use in their “refugia” (connected tanks where beneficial flora and fauna live without predation).
“It was a self-contained marine ecosystem,” says Tepper, an OSU marine biology student. “Different life forms would pop up and dominate the system. I would spend hours just staring at it, observing.”
Fish were a fixture for Tepper. Growing up in Massachusetts meant catching sunfish on the Charles River and fishing for cod and striped bass in Gloucester. His 50-gallon aquarium eventually gave way to a 100-gallon tank in the basement of his Newton home. But he wasn’t satisfied to be on the outside looking in. At 13, he took up scuba so he could swim with the fish. His most enthralling dive happened in the Cayman Islands.
“You descend a hundred feet beside this vertical rock wall that reaches a depth of 3,000 feet and is covered with purple and pink corals,” he says. “Then you turn around and look at the open ocean, this vast blueness without boundaries. It’s mind-blowing.”
After visiting colleges around the country, he chose Oregon State for its top-notch marine biology program. “I wanted to have experiences outside the classroom,” he says. “This program offers lots of opportunities.” On top of that, he enrolled in OSU’s University Honors College.
Right away, he zeroed in on coral reefs for a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) undergrad research program. The summer after his freshman year, he worked on a joint experiment with a lab in Florida to study macro-algae (seaweed) encroachment in Key Largo, where corals are struggling to compete for habitat. “Why are the algae winning?” was the research question for Tepper and his team, led by OSU microbiologist Rebecca Vega Thurber. “What’s the role of micro-organisms like bacteria and viruses?”
Diving at Pickles Reef, Tepper collected mucus from the coral with a syringe for DNA analysis and took samples of three algae species, two brown and one green. He communicated with his dive partner using basic scuba hand signals and messages scrawled on underwater clipboards. His Rescue Diver and Scientific Diver training proved essential, particularly when one of his buddies was low on air and needed to share Jake’s.
Tepper presented his experiment at HHMI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40gGgzZdiZc). Next fall, he heads to Bonaire for more reef research through the Council on International Educational Exchange. And as OSU’s most recent recipient of the prestigious NOAA Hollings Scholarship, he will be working with a NOAA scientist on yet another project, still to be decided.
“My focus is on marine conservation biology,” Tepper says. “Coral reefs are dying. Hurricanes, pollution, overfishing, farm runoff, ocean acidification, big city wastes, disease — all these things destroy reefs. I want to do research on reefs that will lead to the creation of a lot more marine protected areas.”
Katlyn Taylor: “OMG, so much science!”
Whale watching at Depot Bay on the Oregon coast is just one more learning opportunity for Katlyn Taylor. She has traveled to an elephant sanctuary in Nepal and studied marine mammal protection in Mexico. (Photo courtesy of Katlyn Taylor)
Katlyn Taylor’s life has bumped into practically every phylum of the Animal Kingdom. Ask her how she got into science, and she’ll spin a narrative that spans sea lemons, orphaned chickens, 4-H rabbits, endangered Asian elephants, gray whale migration, sea lion pups, the genetics of microbacterial phages and the coloration of sea stars.
And she’s just getting warmed up.
The research Taylor has done since coming to Oregon State from her hometown of Oregon City four years ago is the collegiate sequel to a childhood captivation with animals. When she was 9, for example, she rescued a baby chicken that somehow had wandered into a Fred Meyer restroom. Her little sister wanted a chick, too, so before long the Taylor family had a backyard coop that “accidentally” included a rooster. If the hens pecked each other, little Katlyn would bathe the injured birds in a salad bowl with diluted peroxide. On the yearly family holiday at Cannon Beach, her mom and dad — both high school educators — helped the girls ID the neon-bright, weirdly shaped organisms clinging to Haystack Rock. And how many young women would be rapturous about getting a beachcombers field guide for their 18th birthday?
When it came time to choose a college, Taylor liked OSU’s broad science options. “Half the campus is dedicated to science!” she enthuses. “Oh my gosh, so much science!”
No one could accuse Katlyn Taylor of hanging back or slacking off. Packing the maximum into her college experience seems to be her mission. During her first year as an International Degree student with majors in biology and Spanish, she worked on harvesting the DNA of a microbacterial phage (virus), a project funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. That spring, she presented her team’s findings in Washington, D.C., and went on to coauthor an entry on a National Institutes of Health database.
A Gift from Nepal
Next she went trekking in Nepal with the OSU Geosciences Club, a trip that included visits to Chitwan National Wildlife Refuge (an elephant sanctuary) and Mustang Kingdom, an ancient Buddhist community in the Himalayas. “There was a lady who gave each of us students a white scarf for good luck,” Taylor recalls, a tone of wonderment in her voice. This summer — her last before graduation — she’s off to Mexico to finish her fourth year of Spanish and complete her thesis on how governmental policies of the United States, Canada and Mexico work (or don’t work) to protect marine mammals in the Pacific. In between, she managed to fit in a study abroad experience in Spain and an experiment on the diet and coloration of sea stars.
She also assisted in an introductory marine mammal course at the Hatfield Marine Sciences Center. One mild spring morning, Taylor stands on the headland at Boiler Bay coaching students who are scanning the steely gray ocean for whale blows. Cormorants glide low over the swells while common murres nest on a nearby sea stack. “One of the last times I was here, I saw a juvenile gray whale foraging and some sea lions porpoising,” she says, training her gaze toward the Pacific. After clocking hundreds of hours in laboratories and libraries, and logging thousands of miles in flight and on foot, Taylor still finds enchantment in the sea life back home on the Oregon coast.
Elliott Finn: “Blanket solutions aren’t the answer.”
“I want to work with people to get everyone on the same page — get everyone to understand one another, so we can create solutions that work.” — Elliott Finn (Photo courtesy of Elliott Finn)
What runs through the life of author Norman McLean is a river. In the life of Elliott Finn, it’s a plant.
Vegetation, wild and domestic, wends through every childhood memory: playing hide-and-seek among fruit trees in his parents’ sprawling Soap Creek garden near Corvallis. Dashing through botanical gardens and greenhouses with his little brother Ian. Scrambling up and down granite boulders and hidden canyons among the shadows of Joshua trees in Nevada. Witnessing, after a heavy rain, an eruption of desert sunflowers on the “barren, hardscrabble terrain” of Death Valley.
Even the internship he did with Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley after his sophomore year at Oregon State had a plant component. Amidst the legislative hearings, policy briefings and phone calls from constituents in Washington, D.C., Finn got to do a “super-interesting, super-random” project about a dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) on the U.S. Capitol grounds, a 1985 Arbor Day gift from Oregon’s longtime senator Mark Hatfield.
All of his recollections come with Latin names. “There are eight species of the pitcher plant genus, Sarracenia,” he says, referring to the fly-eating flower that was his special favorite as a kid. He and his dad, a plant geneticist, experimented with cross-breeding Sarracenia and growing the cobra lily (Darlingtonia californica), Oregon’s only native pitcher plant species. Finn rattles off a series of multisyllabic species names and then smiles a little sheepishly. “When both of your parents are horticulturalists, it’s normal to know those terms.”
Connecting People, Solving Problems
But plants are just the buds on Finn’s ambition. It’s the bigger picture — the intersection of ecosystems and human systems — where he hopes to make his mark on the world. His double major — biology and EEPM (Environmental Economics, Policy and Management) — is his attempt to wrap his arms around both nature and humanity for the protection of each. He’s tried lab research but finds it tedious. Instead, he leans toward negotiation, conflict resolution, communication, interaction. For this member of the University Honors College, it’s integrating a “broad range of topics and ideas” that interests him, rather than zeroing in on one “super-specialized area of study.” An inspiring winter abroad in Chile, for example, showed him how environmental policy and community-based fish-and-wildlife management have converged for effective conservation.
“I want to work with people to get everyone on the same page — get everyone to understand one another so we can create solutions that work,” says Finn, who will graduate in fall term. “I’m interested in constellations and connections, in human relationships with one another and the planet, and how science can be applied to solution-making.”
Earth’s future hinges on national concerns being incorporated into regional and local frameworks, he explains. Big federal laws like the Clean Air and Clean Water acts are, of course, critical. “The challenge now is to find points of collaboration for local and regional environmental decision-making,” he says. He cites the work of OSU political science professor Edward Weber, who argues for “grassroots ecosystem management” — local stakeholders plugging into global problems such as climate change and then tackling them on a smaller, more personal scale. “Blanket solutions aren’t the answer,” says Finn.
Still, it’s the Plant Kingdom that lights up Finn’s face most brightly. One spring afternoon, for instance, he’s simultaneously marveling at and worrying about something he just learned in his ecology class: How desert plants like Joshua trees were “classically dispersed” by mastodons and ground sloths, now extinct, and how the trees are in trouble because they depend on a single endangered species of moth for pollination.
“On one hand, it’s sad,” says Finn. “It’s definitely disappointing. But it’s a call for us to pay attention, to make sure it doesn’t occur.”
Allison Stringer: “There’s still hope.”
Allison Stringer in Siberia
Siberia seldom tempts Western travelers to explore its vast taiga forests and endless permafrost — unless that traveler happens to be Allison Stringer. For the OSU biology student, nothing could be more enticing than spending a summer month “out in the middle of nowhere”— living on a barge at the Northeast Science Station near a tiny town called Chersky, discovering the long-buried bones of mammoths and ancient bison in the eroded banks of a nearby river, measuring tree rings with a high-powered microscope and recording carbon levels in soils to gauge the impact of climate change on Arctic ecosystems.
“Preliminary findings show a general pattern of slowing growth rates in trees,” Stringer reports. “The hypothesis is that as temperatures increase and permafrost thaws, the water table drops and drops and drops, eventually dropping below where trees have roots.”
Not every college sophomore would be in her element in such a primitive place with few amenities and even fewer hours of darkness in midsummer. But as a kid growing up in Missoula, Montana, this was a girl who liked frogs more than Barbies, who preferred wildflowers to princesses, and who reveled in the Big Sky landscapes where she camped and fished with her family.
She didn’t wait around to start her career in research. As a high school senior, she worked with a biologist at Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge to monitor stream temperatures with electronic sensors that logged the data hourly. The water in many parts of the refuge, she discovered, was too warm to support native trout. She wrote “a big old paper,” won a bunch of awards, and traveled to Salt Lake City, Colorado Springs and Anchorage to present her poster.
She hasn’t shifted gears since coming to Oregon State, where she continues her full-throttle approach to life and learning as a member of the University Honors College. Besides majoring in biology with the “Marine Biology Option” (extra coursework), she also has a major in fisheries and wildlife and a minor in Spanish. But that’s only the basic framework. Like a zealous tourist who’s determined to fit every last item of clothing into her suitcase, even if it means sitting on the bag to get it latched, Allison Stringer is cramming into her college education every shred of experience she possibly can.
Russian in Her Spare Time
That means studying conservation and rural policymaking in Chile at the Universidad Austral de Chile with fisheries professor Dan Edge (“I do have a travel bug,” she admits). It means investigating nutrient cycling in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest with forestry professor Mark Harmon (“It’s a good opportunity to learn statistics and basic mathematical modeling,” she notes). It means working toward her “dive master” scuba certification with a grant from the Oregon Chapter of the American Fisheries Society (“I applied for so many random grants!” she confesses), plus being a diver-in-training for “scientific diver” certification — all in preparation to study lionfish in the Bahamas this summer with famed reef ecologist Mark Hixon. Oh, and she’s taking a non-credit course in Russian after learning a bit of the language out in Siberia. In her spare time.
Spanish and Russian, lionfish and permafrost, tree rings and native trout, Siberian tundra and Bahamian reefs: What ties these disparate threads together?
“Broadly, it’s ecology and ecosystems,” Stringer explains. “Underlying everything I do is wanting to give back to the world — to leave the world a better place than it was before. Right now, everything is overharvested, overused. But there’s still hope. I’d like to be that hope.”
Justin Conner: “Amphibians are crashing.”
Justin Conner grew up with manatees and alligators in Florida and is now studying amphibians at Oregon State.
When manatees and alligators are members of your backyard ecosystem, it’s like living with a ready-made science project. Justin Conner took full advantage of the biodiversity bursting in and around the Florida canal that linked his childhood home to the ocean. There were peacock bass and cichlids to hook. There were frogs and toads to collect. There were black racers and corn snakes to stalk beneath the dense, tropical foliage.
The curious little boy was boggled by the biology of it all.
“I was always out in nature catching stuff,” says OSU zoology student Justin Conner. “I always liked creepy and crawly — little tiny lizards, frogs, baby toads, snakes. I had just a plethora of reptile and amphibian pets. It was a mini-zoo in a 20-gallon tank. My mom was not too supportive of that.”
One day when he was 8 or 9, he was sitting in the living room riveted to Animal Planet, his favorite show.
The episode showed a guy milking snakes for venom. When the man on camera was identified as a “herpetologist,” Justin jumped up and rushed to the computer. H-e-r-p-e-t-o-l-o-g-i-s-t, he Googled. That’s the moment this child with an innate affinity for cold-blooded organisms (ectotherms) discovered there’s an actual job description for people like him. “I realized I could do this for a living!” Conner marvels.
Which is what brought him to Oregon State after he investigated universities with excellent zoology and ecology programs.
But “herps” aren’t Conner’s only passion. His other big cause is bringing minority students like himself into the sciences. “I’m an activist,” he declares. He recently launched a club on campus called CAMS — Council for the Advancement of Minorities in Science — to connect students of color to mentors, research opportunities and professional development.
Persistence Pays
Frogs and other amphibians have Justin Conner’s full attention as he works in Andrew Blaustein’s lab in the College of Science. (Photo: Lee Sherman)
He wants to help propel African Americans and other minorities in the same spirit in which scientist Tyrone Hayes helped propel Conner’s trajectory at OSU. Hayes, an amphibian researcher at UC Berkeley, was in Corvallis to address the Lois Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, a program for boosting minority completion of degrees in science, technology, engineering and math. After the keynote, Conner and some of his buddies wangled an audience with the high-profile scientist in the Memorial Union ballroom. Conner had been trying unsuccessfully to reach OSU’s prominent frog scientist Andy Blaustein. He asked Hayes for advice on getting Blaustein’s attention.
“I happen to know Andy Blaustein,” Hayes responded. “I’ll tell him you’re my cousin and you’re looking for a job in his lab.”
The ruse worked. Conner (who confessed the deception to Blaustein as soon as they met face-to-face) spent a summer researching “Bd” — Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, a chytrid fungus that is decimating frog populations worldwide. When he was knee deep in a pond one morning, collecting egg masses and swabbing frogs for signs of the fungus, he heard a gurgling sound in his rubber boots. “Turns out I had holes in my waders,” he says. “My feet got cold. But we saw tons of tadpoles!”
He also worked on a collaborative project with the University of Pittsburgh, looking at the effects of carotenoids (plant pigments that are sources of vitamin A and antioxidants) on three species of frogs. “Amphibians are crashing at an astronomical rate,” laments Conner, who intends to study the threatened animals in tropical countries like Costa Rica after getting his Ph.D. “About 70 percent of species are threatened or endangered.”
After he presented his poster, “The Effect of Carotenoid Supplementation on Disease Susceptibility in Amphibians” at a professional meeting at Boise State, Conner won first place for undergraduate research. That led to a scholarship to present at Arizona State. “My poster’s my pride and joy,” he says, adding gratitude for grad student Stephanie Gervasi and others who guided him. “I had so much help. I’m thankful for the people who helped.”
What It’s Like to Necropsy a Moose
It’s physical and sensual. It’s not an exercise in hypothetical counter-factuals or wonderings about brains in vats or the playing of a clever devil’s advocate. It’s hot and uncomfortable and smelly. You flail in vain at ginormous mosquitos with your forearms and shoulders (because your hands are covered in rubber gloves which are covered in moose grease and hold a sharp knife); you record information on a necropsy card; you walk ever-widening circles in search of bones dragged off and chewed on under a balsam fir tree; you cut the tendons between metatarsus and femur, and find the skull and the lower mandible; you tag, and bag, and carry them home.
But unless you have no soul or imagination it’s also stunning and humbling. Someone who was intelligent and sensitive and brave, who had no interest in being killed and eaten, fought very hard but died here. And others, who were also intelligent and sensitive and brave, who also fought very hard, were fed here. And the breeze picks up. Little lonely ghosts of an adrenalin-drenched drama linger in this place – you can feel them. And it’s appropriate to breathe in and to be deeply silenced by this truth.
Goldberg Prize for Peace in the Middle East 2013
144th OSU Commencement
2013 Ceremony Information:
Date: Saturday, June 15, 2013
Time: 10:30am (when graduates enter the stadium)
Rain or Shine event
No Tickets required
For more details, visit: http://oregonstate.edu/events/commencement
OSU Spring Term Ends
Pathway Programs Spring Term Ends
GE Spring Session 2 Ends
AE Spring Term Ends
Jane Lubchenco kicks off OSU speaker series at da Vinci Days
Jane Lubchenco will kick off the 2013 da Vinci Days Festival in Corvallis. (Photo: Joy Leighton)
Jane Lubchenco, Oregon State University professor and former administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will give the opening night keynote address at Corvallis’ annual da Vinci Days festival on Friday, July 19.
Her presentation, “From the Silly to the Sublime: Stories about Science in D.C,” will begin at 7 p.m. in the Whiteside Theater. It is free and open to the public.
Lubchenco will reflect on her experiences with NOAA, the federal agency in charge of weather forecasts and warnings, climate records and outlooks. NOAA is also the nation’s ocean agency, managing fisheries, monitoring changes, and being the steward of ocean health in federal waters. NOAA’s satellites, ships, planes and other platforms and its cadre of scientists provide the information and understanding that support those activities.
Since stepping down from NOAA, Lubchenco has been on leave at Stanford University and plans to return to Oregon State in June.
Steve Amen hosts Oregon Field Guide, the popular outdoors science program produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting. (Photo courtesy of OPB)
Lubchenco’s talk will launch a weekend series of family-friendly talks by Oregon State researchers that will focus on the ongoing Mars rover mission, decoding the golden ratio, underwater photography from Antarctica and invasive bullfrogs in our lakes and streams.
All weekend presentations will be held in Kearney Hall, which is located on the university campus across from the da Vinci Days fairgrounds. They are also free and open to the public.
Steve Amen, host of Oregon Public Broadcasting’s popular Oregon Field Guide, will conclude the series as the festival’s closing speaker. His presentation, “Oregon’s Splendor,” will begin at 4 p.m. Sunday in Kearney Hall. He will share some of his favorite spots in Oregon, from the high desert to the coast.
Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s left-brain-meets-right-brain genius, the first da Vinci Days festival was held in 1989. In addition to the speaker series, this celebration of arts, science and technology features independent films, live music and a kinetic sculpture race. Hands-on exhibition booths and demonstrations on the Oregon State campus invite students and families to explore the many creative sides of OSU and the Corvallis community.
See more about da Vinci Days at www.davincidays.org.
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OSU speakers scheduled for da Vinci Days in 112 Kearney Hall
Saturday, July 20
11 a.m. Jack Barth, Ocean Exploration with Underwater Gliders
Underwater gliders are a key component of OSU’s new Ocean Observatories Initiative. As they patrol the ocean depths, these autonomous robots are giving scientists new views of the marine ecosystems. See a glider and learn how it navigates, dives and resurfaces in the course of collecting data on ocean currents, dissolved oxygen, plankton and more.
12 noon. Dan Rockwell, A Mathematical Detective Story: Decoding the golden ratio
We’re surrounded by pattern and rhythm. From the branching of an ancient oak to the classical architecture of a courthouse, our environment reflects principles of harmony and repetition. We can use the language of mathematics to see this underlying reality. We’ll explore our world through the Golden Ratio and other tools that show how forms lead to function.
1 p.m. Marty Fisk, Curiosity on Mars: NASA’s search for habitable environments.
Scientists have found life in surprising places: in rocks a mile under the ocean floor and in scalding pools of hot water. In comparison, Mars may not be such a long shot. Martin Fisk, OSU marine geologist, is part of the NASA team that analyzes the Martian landscape for places where life existed in the past or could exist today.
2 p.m. Seri Robinson, The Art and Science of Spalted Wood
The art of wood spalting dates back to 15th century Italy. Wood scientist Seri Robinson will talk about how it’s done and give visitors a chance to make their own by applying fungi to wood veneer.
3 p.m. Andrew Thurber, Life in the Polar Ocean
Life under polar ice thrives in surprising abundance. Sponges, sea stars, tube worms and anemones dot the sea floor around Antarctica while ice fish carve out caves to hid from predatory seals. Overhead during the summer, a light show flashes sunset colors and illuminates natural ice sculptures. At this presentation, see images from the seafloor near the U.S. Antarctic station at McMurdo, learn what it’s like to dive into a dark nearly frozen realm and hear how art is informed by science.
Sunday, July 21
12 noon Tiffany Garcia, Bullfrogs and Other Threats to Aquatic Ecosystems
Bullfrogs are native to the central and eastern United States. In the West, they eat native frogs, fish, reptiles and even birds and small mammals, “about anything it can fit down its throat,” according to the Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. This demonstration will include live bullfrogs and discussion of other threats to aquatic ecosystems in Oregon.
1 p.m. Skip Rochefort, Engineering for the Fun of It
2 p.m. Zach Dunn, Kel Wer: A film about water, survival, and hope in Lela, Kenya
In July of 2012, a group of Oregon State University students traveled to the small village of Lela, Kenya with the goal of helping the community gain access to safe water. Kel Wer (“to bring song” in the native Dholuo language) is a film that tells the story of their journey, the challenges they faced, and the incredibly welcoming and resilient people they met along the way. Zachary Dunn, currently a graduate student at OSU, was part of that expedition and will present the film and answer questions.
3 p.m. Michael Wing, The Future of Unmanned Aerial Systems
Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are now becoming available at prices well below $2000. Coupled with light weight sensors, UAS are capable of capturing high resolution imagery that can support natural resource management, disaster response, and search and rescue operations. This presentation will include information about low-cost UAS and how this technology can be used for the benefit of society.
