Gaia Desert

So I had a crash on my 3dr IRIS in Peru and the details are here. Here are some of the photos from the timelapse series. Everything going normal and the IRIS is hovering Uh oh..loiter doesn't work, I'll try altitude hold...  Oh no, those don't work..I'll try to get it back in stabilize...  Maybe RTL...nope...I'll try fly mission...maybe it will go back to California....Stabilize isn't working and it has now started on its fly away... Still no response... Click on the picture below you and you can see me starting to run in an attempt to grab the up-and-coming wreckage before someone else does. It is not easy to run/walk through a sewage wetland at 12,500 feet. Add caption LUCK #1 - Thankfully it crashed into a bush in a little lake side park. The Mobius camera was in good condition. LUCK #2 - A nice man saw it and stood next to it for a while and then handed it to me when he saw me running over.

In a previous blog post , I discussed some ideas on open hardware air sensor designs that could work well for the Environmental Justice community in the Eastern Coachella Valley (ECV). After some months of tinkering, talking and planning,  I realize that that the technology development is probably only about 30% of the innovation required for this type of air monitoring citizen project. I'll approach this from the end result and talk about goals and objectives first. A reasonable goal would include the end health outcome while also hypothesizing the method for how that objective will be achieved. Here are some examples from similar star grants: By improving indoor air quality  (IAQ) and reducing environmental asthma triggers this study intends to reduce  asthma symptoms related to tribal home-&-school childhood exposures.  Some don't list a clear goal on the project description page but have hypothesis and an approach such as this one on water and this one on toxico

In Ethiopia the Oromo of Gimbie say that the Devil is in the middle of a dust devil and will possess you if it passes over you. There are a few more myths of dust devils here on the wikipedia page . Dust Devils are one of the top ten reasons why I love the desert. These mini-tornadoes are spooky, very common, yet not quite acknowledged in modern society. Freeway drivers don't notice them and weather stations don't report them. How can we not acknowledge a 500 foot tall genie that appears in the desert? They are a striking feature of the American desert that increase in frequency as human development progresses. I see them often during drought conditions, dry agricultural fields, or development projects that have gone bankrupt. My friend Jaime Lopez was driving around the eastern Coachella city limits and came across this one. That brave tractor driver was going where no tractor driver has gone before...

We are headed to Laguna Chacas to implement a lake water quality assessment. Here are some links to the ideas that Javier has suggested. Water Quality A very good low cost fecal bacteria indicator: The H2S bacteria test Riffle sampler for aquatic macroinvertebrates. Something similar to the Hester-Dendy sampler Aerial Mapping  Kite or Balloon mapping: http://www.publiclab.org/wiki/balloon-mapping The biggest expense is helium. You can make balloons from emergency mylar sleeping bags. We could map sewage outflows and algal blooms Using RC planes or quadcopters to map algal blooms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu28ltyBxro  Its more expensive than the Balloon mapping

The citizen science trend is growing as groups are able to now use inexpensive sensors such as those listed on the SEEED wiki  (China) or the sparkfun website (USA) or many others.  These are all plug-n-play sensors that anyone can spend a weekend setting up and monitoring their outdoor environment. One of my citizen science goals is to use Unmanned Aerial Surveillance for environmental monitoring. This can be used for Environmental justice, or for documenting natural phenomena.  There was a recent use of a drone to monitor a meat packing industry's waste to a river. A benefit of UAS (drone) use is that they are not allowed to be used for commercial uses. That means that industry can't use them to collect data on private citizens. Drone operators are forbidden by the FAA to operate them for a profit. The converse of this is that citizens can use them to monitor industry. The UAS are great for environmental justice. A couple of groups using them for environmental purposes ar

I am looking for a particulate sensor that we can use with the Eastern Coachella valley Environmental Justice community. The community member hosting the device will benefit from the technology by understanding their air quality, their health and how it compares to the rest of the world. Its an exercise in public health education and empowerment. When a family hosts a device, it could potentially inform and educate them about the air quality parameters that are used; how their community ranks with the rest of the country and localize some of the air quality warnings. The ideal outdoor air quality senso r should have the following abilities: CRITERIA: Be robust, small, portable and weather resistant for an outdoor site. Be unobtrusive in its appearance to detract from vandalism Have AC and DC power options where it could be run from a battery and/or plugged in Require none or very simple zeroing and calibrations that can be run by a citizen with a high school education.  Be net

Thinking of publishing in an open access journal? Will your tenure track committee notice if the journal has an obscure name? Why don't you publish in the Journal of Applied Public Health Research? Sounds too good to be true? If you are interested, please read about this sting operation: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full I receive many emails per day inviting me to publish in reputable open access journals. My favorite quote is this: "We are ardent to promote erudite, pragmatic, and contemporaneous research" This is from a journal supposedly based in San Diego. . There are more interesting guidelines for selecting a reputable journal here: http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/01/02/list-of-predatory-publishers-2014/