Welcome to my Virtual Field Station


Pondering a Life of Digitizing Nature

"Spooky" - Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge - 2020

"The story in which you believe shapes the society that you create."

Yuval Noah Harari

Owl Farm Time Machine

October 2023

The Owl Farm Time Machine: This is a fun, collaborative project to create a tool to study a landscape and its long-term changes at a unique "Idea Farm" located in NorthWest Washington.

WEATHER

Updated every 15 minutes

Current Weather Conditions in Oregon City, Oregon

Drone School at Reed College

September 2023

I taught remote sensing of forest canopies using camera drones to a group of undergraduate students at Reed College. My lab is part of the course Biology 313 - Forest Canopy Ecophysiology, taught by Prof. Aaron Ramirez. We are learning the basics of flying small drones and using them to create a 3D model or "digital twin" of the trees that are photographed. The model can be used to define the height, perimeter and structural attributes of every tree that is surveyed. Students are comparing the results of using these tools with manual measurements.

The Urban Forest Digital Twin

August 2023

The Urban Forest Digital Twin: Technologies to build virtual forests for urban forestry, STEM education, and public outreach.

The MossCam: R.I.P.

July 2023

This is the story of the "world famous" MossCam, an early experiment in the use of an Internet-viewable webcam, weather station, and time-lapse studies of the ecological niche of a small but mighty plant that has the unique capacity for living through the driest conditions but then resurrecting itself in a matter of seconds after the first touch of rain or fog.