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Tag: drone
Weekly Salvage
Foghorn (A Call to Action!)
- Congratulations to Dr. Hal Holmes of Conservation X Labs for earning a Moore Foundation Inventor Fellowship for his DNA Barcode Project.
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
Weekly Salvage
Fog Horn (A Call to Action)
- The US Government is shut down. This is not great news for science (at the moment, my project to train ROV technicians and deliver 5 – 10 observation-class underwater robots to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is on hold pending resolution). Call you congressperson and give them an earful. Call you senator and give them an earful.
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
- Women Writing About the Wild: 25 Essential Authors: A primer on who to start reading and who you’ve been overlooking for too long.
- This paper: Managing marine socio-ecological systems: picturing the future, which, holy mola, is written in graphic novel format!
Weekly Salvage
Fog Horn (A Call to Action)
- Hurricane Harvey has passed, but its impacts will continue to be felt for years to come. There’s lots of great organizations to donate to, but in the immediate aftermath,it’s often best to donate to local relief programs that already have a ground team in place, rather than national groups that will take weeks to build up their infrastructure. I’m a fan of the Texas Diaper Bank and Portlight Inclusive Disaster Strategies, both of which serve communities that tend to be particularly vulnerable during natural disasters.
- Gratuitous self promotion! The OpenCTD and Oceanography for Everyone has been selected as a finalist in National Geographic’s Chasing Genius Challenge! Please help me win the People’s Choice award by voting for the OpenCTD. Visit http://www.natgeochasinggenius.com/video/776, create or sign into your Chasing Genius account, and click the yellow star to vote on my video. Thank you!
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
- It will take months, if not years, to fully understand the impacts of Hurricane Harvey, which already looks to be the costliest storm in US history. These drone videos give you some idea of the sheer scale of the damage. The Washington Post has an interactive map to help visualize what the equivalent deluge would look like around the world: What the Harvey deluge would look like where you live.
Conservation
The US Fish and Wildlife Service is adapting new technology to the business of saving and endangered species: they’re sending in the drones.
Black-footed ferrets are a small, solitary, extremely territorial weasel-like animal that lives in the American west. Once abundant in central North America, today, their wild population stands at around 500. Black-footed ferrets were decimated by sylvatic plague (a close relative of the bubonic plague), as well as habitat loss and an early eradication campaign.
Read More “The plague-busting, prairie-dog-vaccinating, ferret-saving drone” »