#mcleman

Thermal mapping with the department drone

^ Above: A tour of the Centre for Cold Regions and Water Science

^ Above:  Graduate student research talks

^ Above:  Thermal mapping with the department drone

^ Above:  Smartphone-based citizen science data collection

^ Above:  An inspiring talk by Aboriginal Scholar-in-Residence Darren Thomas

Our faculty hosted international students from Association of Commonweatlth Universities. They came from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Europe.

The academic goal was to expose the students (all of whom are at the graduate level) to ways of collecting and interpreting environmental data.

Thomas is a second-year MSc Geomatics student whose research uses camera sensors mounted on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, aka drones) to observe and monitor the health of apple orchards.

~ Above: “Image of Thomas with the UAV used for the research” 

The UAV flies three different types of camera sensors over orchards to obtain data, which is then put through computer algorithms to identify information such as which trees may be suffering from lack of water, as well when trees need to be watered.

Types of camera sensors: - a HD digital camera to obtain true colour images and to generate a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the orchard. - a Near Infrared (NIR) camera to create a Normalized Vegetation Differential Index (NDVI) to estimate of the biomass of the plants. - a thermal camera to measure plant temperatures.

Understanding precisely when trees need to be watered helps an apple grower conserve water and maximize their fruit yield. Apple growing is a highly competitive industry, and Ontario growers are faced with many challenges, including climatic variability and change. Thomas’s research is the first of its kind in Canada, and promises to teach us more about the potential for using UAVs and camera sensors in Ontario agriculture.

Great work Thomas!

Dr. McLeman is in Durham, England today, presenting his research on environmental migration at the largest international conference on the topic in many years. You can learn more about his research at http://www.environmentalmigrationtocanada.org

Dr. McLeman was interviewed recently on Rogers Daytime about NatureWatch, a citizen science project where Canadians are asked to use their smartphones to submit observations of frogs, toads, flowering plants, earthworms, and freeze/thaw times of lakes and rivers. Watch the video to learn more. Students in ES102 Environmental Problems & Approaches study citizen science in one of their first labs in Winter semester.

The interview is attached:

Hi, I’m Robert McLeman. I’m entering my fourth year as a professor at Laurier, where I teach in the Environmental Studies program. This fall I will be teaching one of my favourite courses, ES298 Environmental Thought, where we read samples from classics in environmental literature, like “Walden” by Henry David Thoreau and “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson. This is a seminar style course, and we do some fun stuff. For example, last year when we were studying why many people like to garden, we did so while gardening. We planted tomato seeds during class, and raised them on windowsills in the department, and had a Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1601744863389511/) so we could monitor their growth. I’ve got some of them planted in my back yard right now. I’ll write more about ES298 in another posting. In the Winter 2016 semester I’ll be teaching two courses: ES102 Environmental Problems and a first-year seminar course AF101N Environmental Refugees and Climate Change. I’ll write more about them later, too.