Lab Updates

The past month brought exciting travel adventures to the SEAL lab as Izzi, Owen, Jenna, and Grace traveled to present their research at the European Geophysical Union (EGU) General Assembly in Vienna, Austria, and at the European Space Agency’s Centre for Earth Observation in Rome (Frascati), Italy.

A big change is coming to the SEAL lab with the departure of Ian (now Dr. McGregor) and J (now Dr. Gao) as they successfully defended their dissertations this summer and will be moving on from their time at NCSU!

Congratulations to our own Jenna Abrahamson for being awarded the 2023 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship! As per the NSF GRFP website, “the purpose of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is to ensure the quality, vitality, and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States.

Another term, another round of busy-ness and good news to share! The lab has certainly been keeping busy since the winter holidays with both research pushes and general accomplishments. First among those at the end of January was our CGA banquet, an annual event where all CGA members are invited to a dinner and awards are given out to people who have excelled within the department.

Last week (12-16 Dec), 5 of SEAL folks attended AGU2022 in-person at Chicago. Although the temperature was kind of cold, we had a lot of fun and were so excited to see old and new friends (especially meet people we have been working with virtually during the COVID period), and make connections with many scientists in the remote sensing field.

Slides presented as a part of the Raster workshop from CGA’s lunch and learn series can be found here

After a very warm summer, we here at SEAL are glad that Fall (term) has finally started, especially because that hopefully means we’ll see some cooler temperatures. And as always, the beginning of term ushers in a new suite of changes, from the sudden appearance of thousands of students on campus again to the choices made for which remaining classes we have to take.

If you’ve been looking at our website recently, you may have noticed a pretty big change in the “Team” section: our own Laura Wendelberger has successfully defended her PhD thesis and will soon be graduated from NC State!

Just over a month ago, SEAL members (sans Josh) decided to celebrate the end of thee semester in a slightly different way than usual. We headed out to the Outer Banks (OBX), the local term for the northern barrier islands of North Carolina, for some exploration and ultimate flight.

Land surface phenology (LSP) is a consistent and sensitive indicator of climate change effects on Earth’s vegetation, it plays an important role in tracking climate change, diagnosing agricultural management practices, and investigating ecosystem processes over large spatial scales.