By Julia Kelm
It was a sunny Tuesday morning at Cal Poly Humboldt, and students were gathered in the library eager to hear about NASA’s (The National Aeronautics and Space Administration) installation of a state-of-the-art instrument, the Aeronet.
Elena Lind, the scientist from NASA who assisted with the installation of the technology, gave a one-hour presentation on how the Aeronet worked and what NASA would use it for.
Lind is a part of the co-lead of NASA’s Aeronet program and was on campus on Sept. 3 to assist in the setup of the instrument.
The Aeronet device’s purpose is to measure aerosol properties in the atmosphere, which is captured every 15 minutes. There now are over 500 active sites worldwide capturing this data.
Sara Hanna is the forestry lecturer that helped orchestrate the process to get the Aeronet onto Cal Poly Humboldt’s campus.
“We’re pulling down data right now, our area is very clean here,” Hanna said.
The data collected from the Aeronet reflects the air quality in our area, which according to the data is very good.
Hanna primarily lectures for Cal Poly Humboldt in the Department of Forestry and Wildland Resources. She holds an M.S. from Cal Poly Humboldt in natural resources and a B.S. in environmental systems from UC San Diego.
Hanna also explained that the data collected from the Aeronet would be accessible to any interested student.
“That’s really what I’m most excited about, is just getting students in on it,” Hanna said. “Having stuff that’s actually happening here on campus — and us being able to contribute to part of this larger mission of NASA.”
Students who were there at the presentation also seemed eager to use the collected data from the Aeronet project.
Christina Bewley is a geology major with a minor in applied mathematics and geospatial programming at Cal Poly Humboldt. Bewley thinks the data from the Aeronet could be beneficial to her research with her ongoing work with CalTrans and the California Coastal Commission related to climate change and sea levels.
“Hearing about this opportunity, that they’re installing a new sensor on top of the library,” Bewley said. “That can particularly help with measuring things related to climate change and ecosystems off the coast was particularly interesting to me.”
The Aeronet site should be a worthwhile piece of technology for years to come—as long as there’s always someone to take care of the site.
Hanna explained that the Aeronet needs regular maintenance to ensure that the site stays operable. This means interest in the project is vital for it to stay functioning.
“I do wanna get a sort of solid network of other professors and researchers on campus that are interested in doing it,” Hanna said. “That way it doesn’t get lost.”
If you’re interested in viewing the data collected by the Aeronet please view the link below.
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