Welcome to my Virtual Field Station

August 2021

Hello,

My career as a biological field station director and scientist opens many doors to sharing, consultation, and collaboration. In addition, I teach field courses that integrate studies within many significant natural areas worldwide. Amidst retirement and constrained by current events, I've taken my outreach online with this website project.

We must acknowledge the pandemic's impact on our network of field stations, as they are often dependent on the revenue generated from user fees. Without the on-site presence of our students, faculty, and citizen scientists, my colleagues have scrambled for ideas to make up for this lost revenue and to add relevancy for maintaining our stations and protected areas. The virtual field trip concept is being actively explored to fill this need. While it certainly takes a back seat to an actual visit, it is vital to experiment with the possibilities of expanding the connections between virtual access and being on-site in the pedagogy of field studies.

Animal Vegetable Robot is a portal for you to explore various dimensions of the virtual field theme. I'm constructing immersive virtual tours of inspiring places I study, and I'll demonstrate research themes that have informed these designs. Included are links to the real-time camera and environmental sensor data from networked field systems I installed. Other web pages include collections of my outdoor photography, interactive GIS maps, stories, natural history data, reference materials, contact information, and of course, robots!

I launched my website this week; however, it's a template for a more comprehensive effort that will advance over the next few months. So watch for any new additions in the sidebar to the right.

Thanks for reading,

Mike Hamilton
Canemah Nature

Oregon City, Oregon