When Nature Calls

We lost internet recently so this is a bit late. Combined with the fact that we got home late and we’re leaving at 4:30 AM tomorrow I’ll have to keep this entry rather brief.

Friday was our first bigtime data collection day. We spent the morning taking GPS points and pictures/metadata about the different land coverage types we saw. The idea here was that by doing so we could then match our data with the images taken from our remote sensing devices and be able to create a classification scheme which would allow us to predict where we could find native species on other places on the island which are harder to reach for botanists. After lunch we climbed a “mountain” to get a better view of our whole study area, then descended to watch the profs attempt to launch the Gatewing UAV. It worked! I think they spent a lot of the day working on it and getting frustrated but we only showed up for the launch so, worked out well for us. Nice to see that it went smoothly (smoothly enough at least). That was the bulk of our work for the day as at that point we returned home to a delicious pasta bar for dinner and some lovely team bonding. Nice to have another group member from my neck of the woods, I do love talking to the point of annoyance about the PNW…