I thought October 5, 2021, would be a normal day. I sat in a diner with my family after school, scrolling through my email and sipping a mint chocolate chip milkshake. It had been two months since my NASA STEM Enhancement in Earth Science (SEES) internship ended– or so I thought.
Suddenly, I received an intriguing email. The subject line read, “AGU Fall Meeting 2021 Abstract Status...
During the SEES internship, I got the opportunity to do data collection fieldwork. This required me to go around my neighborhood and take pictures of specific points that had been calculated using a Python notebook. Some of these points were in parts of my neighborhood that I’d never been to, despite being in my fourteenth year of living there. I even saw a pack of wild javelinas in a...
Image Credit: Jenn Glaser, ScribeArts
If the last mosquito season felt longer, or if mosquito bites seemed to hurt more than you remembered, you didn’t imagine it! Mosquitoes respond sensitively to changes in heat, humidity, and precipitation, and serve as buzzy, annoying sentinels of our changing climate. Here’s how mosquitoes are letting us know our climate is changing.
...
Coming into the NASA SEES Internship, I had only ever experienced science through a
one-dimensional lens. I always knew the results, experimenting just to prove existing
knowledge. This internship taught me to look outside the box and challenge my preconceived
notions to discover new relationships that exist on our earth.
Through our weekly meetings, I got to interact with guest speakers and...
Have you ever wondered how NASA develops accurate models of the earth's surface from space? How do we know the topography of the planet, the behavior of the water cycle, or the changes to sea level? My experience with the NASA SEES Earth System Explorers virtual internship this summer gave me a glimpse into the process of how such data is collected, analyzed, and ultimately presented:...
After digging through my sea of emails, I remember the thrill I felt when I received my acceptance into the NASA SEES Internship Earth Explorers- Mosquito Mappers. Realizing this would be the first time I experienced a program remotely, my mind raced with questions. What will it be like, being part of a research team? What if I mess up the registration process? What would research look...
Background
Remote working and remote learning presented challenges to
us all. As a Master Trainer in Colombia, Juan Felipe Restrepo Mesa
faced and overcame his share of challenges when working with a new
group of educators from rural areas. Most of the training material
and the tests that need to be answered were in English. This, of
course, means that citizen scientists who do not...
I was excited when I heard that I got a second opportunity to participate in the NASA SEES internship. I was fortunate to be selected last year too. But when I found out that I was placed on the Mosquito Mapper team, initially I was a bit disappointed that I did not get my preferred choice. But I went in with an open mind.
In both years, the internship falls during my school year because in...
Co-author and GLOBE Observer scientist Dr. Rusty Low (right) with co-author, Anita Schiller (left), Director, Biological Control Initiative, Harris County, TX, Precinct 4. “We encourage you to conduct your own local mosquito “expedition” and submit photos during the Mosquito Habitat Photo Challenge.“ More details on the challenge are further below.Rusty: When we told our friends we were going...
The GLOBE Mosquito Habitat Photo Challenge kicked off Sunday, July 25 and continues through August 25, 2021. This challenge combines Mosquito Habitat Mapper and Land Cover (two GLOBE Observer app tools) to document areas with and without mosquito breeding habitats using only photos. A picture could be worth a thousand words. But can we use computers to tell us which words...
Have you ever wondered what happens after you submit your GLOBE Observer data? Citizen science data has many applications and is also incredibly important for scientists who are working in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). This is because citizen science observations are an effective way to obtain the tens of thousands of photos needed to train, validate, and test predictive models...
Hi! My name is Om, and I'm a high school junior. This summer, I participated in the SEES Internship Program a partnership with UT Austin and NASA, and worked with the Mosquito Mapper cohort. The goal of the Mosquito Mappers is to collect mosquito larva, analyze this data, and draw conclusions about mosquitoes and their land cover habitats. I started the internship in early June with an...
Hello, I’m Prayag Sreenivasan, and I’m a student in the NASA SEES 2021 MosquitoMappers internship. A big part of the internship is doing hands-on research projects ourselves. With the Mosquito Mappers team, we were to utilize land cover data and mosquito mapper data with GLOBE to study mosquito populations with our projects.The first project we were assigned was to cultivate mosquitoes in about...
Aseel, a SEES 2021 Earth System Explorer/Mosquito Mapper shares this research.
This summer, I am delighted to have a unique opportunity to dig deeper and learn more about mosquitoes, trends in larval habitats, and environmental satellite data. It's giving me a chance to expand my knowledge about mosquitoes. Last year, I researched and developed a low-cost and environmentally sustainable...
Paxton C, spent the summer of 2021 involved with a virtual NASA internship, the STEM Enhancement in Earth Science (SEES) Program, through the Texas Space Grant Consortium. More specifically, I am working on the GLOBE Mosquito Mappers Earth Explorers Project, where I am studying mosquito habitats and vector-borne disease alongside mentors and fellow interns from all over the nation.To get going...
Ali Rospond, Museum Education Coordinator, American Philosophical Society.
Imagine Philadelphia in 1793. The growing city had a population of 50,000 of which around 2,000 were black Philadelphians, 310 of whom were enslaved. The city was the center of government, trade, science, and medicine. The country was still trying to find its footing; the U.S. Constitution was signed only six...
Alissa S. is a high school student from New Jersey. She is currently participating in the 2021 STEM Enhancement in the Earth Sciences Mosquito Habitat Mapper summer research intern cohort.Hi! My name is Alissa, and I’m an intern at the NASA SEES Earth Explorers/Mosquito Mappers internship. At this internship, we do research, and that research is based on GLOBE Land Cover and Mosquito Mapper...
Rahil V. is a high school student from Maryland. He was part of the 2020 STEM Enhancement in the Earth Sciences Mosquito Habitat Mapper summer research intern cohort. This past summer I attended the SEES Virtual Mosquito Mappers Internship, changing my life. I suppose "life-changing" is often used arbitrarily to describe a great experience, but I can assure you, I do mean life-changing. I...
Two projects have adopted the GO Mosquito Habitat Mapper tool as a way to obtain data for scientific analysis. The GLOBE Mission Mosquito Campaign plays an official role in a research project funded by the National Science Foundation: Citizen Epidemiology: Designing and Connecting Next-Generation Cyber, Biological, and Citizen Science Systems for the Surveillance and Control of Mosquito-Borne...
This collaborative webinar was planned and presented by three NASA Science Activation Earth science awards and the GLOBE Implementation Office. Each group shared a broad range of NASA-sponsored opportunities and resources to connect students to investigating our Earth system using NASA and GLOBE data. The recording is available...
