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Droning out forest fires

June 20, 2009

CSUMB researcher honored for work in fighting wildfires from the sky

A CSU Monterey Bay adjunct faculty member and senior research scientist at NASA has received the space agency's Exceptional Public Service Medal.

Vince Ambrosia (pictured at left) of the university's Division of Science and Environmental Policy and NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View was honored for his work on the development and use of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technologies to provide critical information to firefighters.

The medal is awarded to non-government employees and recognizes exceptional contributions to the mission of NASA. It is one of the agency's most prestigious honors.

NASA is known for putting astronauts on the moon and a telescope in space, but it also works with agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service to improve the observations of our own planet's phenomenon. Ambrosia led one of those efforts, which involved demonstrating how imaging systems on a UAV can be employed to provide critical information about major blazes including the location, size and terrain around the fires to commanders in the field in as little as 10 minutes.

"This unmanned aircraft can send real-time data around the clock so that incident commanders can redeploy resources or get firefighters out of harm's way," Ambrosia said. "The UAVs provide a safer way than manned vehicles to perform '3-D missions' - dull, dirty and dangerous."

Pilots at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center in the Mojave Desert operate the aircraft from the ground. Sensors collect detailed thermal-infrared imagery, even at night and through smoke plumes up to 40,000 feet. A satellite data link allows real-time transfer of the fire imagery to NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, where it is quickly made available online to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, and to field operations teams in simple visualization formats, including Goggle Earth-compatible files.

"Our project . . . showcases the reputation CSUMB has gotten in the national community for having a strong Science and Environmental Policy faculty," Ambrosia said. "Some of our project team members are former CSUMB students who have excelled here (at NASA) and continue to showcase the strengths of the university and the SEP program."

Dr. Susan Alexander is the faculty principal investigator for the cooperative agreement between NASA and CSUMB. The two organizations conduct collaborative research in ecological and watershed systems with an emphasis on local, regional and global environmental problems and issues resulting from changing climatic and land-use patterns.

Graduate students in CSUMB's master's program in Coastal and Watershed Science and Policy and advanced undergraduates in the Environmental Science, Technology and Policy program have the opportunity to work with researchers at NASA Ames.