In the most recent edition of the College of Science's Discovery magazine, Hannah had the chance to write a student perspective celebrating the history of the Mackay School and her own research efforts. She discussed the drone work that she has done, and how this relates to the history of John Mackay, the Comstock Silver Baron that was influential in starting the School of Mines in the 1800s. 

With the summer coming to an end, Hannah finished up her work gathering data for her master's project. This project focuses on the use of drones to collect information about Mohave Ground Squirrel, a threated species of ground squirrel that lives in the Northern Mojave Desert. For her thesis, she is using microphones suspended from drones to capture audio information from the squirrels,  which can be used to determine if the squirrels are present in the area or not. This research is one of the first to use drone-based microphones to study a mammalian species, and Hannah cannot wait to see how the process turns out. Stay tuned as she processes her data for more updates! 

A very big thank you to Steve Ishii of the Mohave Ground Squirrel Council for the amazing photos! 

Every year, the University of Nevada, Reno presents incoming freshman with a week of classes, fun activities, and other college experiences called NevadaFIT. This program helps incoming students get to know their campus, each other, and about all the opportunities that being a member of the Wolf Pack provides. This year, the Drone Rangers had a chance to be apart of the College of Agriculture, Biotechnology, and Natural Resource's NevadaFIT program in the form of Tracy Shane offering a drone demonstration and information session. This was an amazing chance for students to get to know about all the opportunities that drones provide, and to get the chance to see what they can really do. 

We are excited to celebrate Sarah's win of the 2023 Rangeland Ecology and Management Outstanding Senior Award. This award is truly well-deserved, as Sarah has been a credit to the University through her hard work, study, research with Tracy, and club involvement. Way to go Sarah! 

This week Hannah had the chance to present her Honors thesis, "Allometric Equations for 'Immigrant' Forage Kochia" at the University of Nevada, Reno Wolf Pack Discoveries Poster Session. She worked throughout the semester to refine her written thesis portion and then got to share her work with the rest of the university alongside other Honors students and researchers. Her thesis and project won "Outstanding Honors Thesis" within the Honors College, the inaugural year for this distinction. 

This year, Tracy hosted a drone workshop and training event as a part of the Nevada State FFA Convention. Students were shown a presentation and given a demonstration of some of our drones. Giving students this hands on experience is not only cool, it allows these future members of the ag industry to see all the advantages and opportunities that come with the use of drones. Way to go Tracy! 

This February, the Drone Rangers got to represent some of our research by presenting and participating in the 2023 Society for Range Management conference in Boise, Idaho. Tracy presented two posters, "Improving Grazing Prescriptions: Comparison of forage production estimates from traditional plot-based methods and small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) imagery classification methods" and "Ameliorating shadow effects in small unoccupied aerial system (sUAS) imagery when estimating vegetation cover". Hannah was also able to present her poster "Allometric Equations for 'Immigrant' Forage Kochia" at the conference. 

Representing drone research and women in STEM at this conference was a special opportunity, and allowed our team to visit with rangeland professionals and students, while engaging in conversations about the use of drones in and above the rangelands that we all treasure. 

Recently, Tracy had the opportunity to a training for the Great Basin Institute Trail Crew in summer of 2021 at the Santa Rosa Range. The Great Basin Institute is an interdisciplinary field studies organization that promotes environmental research, education, and service throughout the West. Founded in 1998 at the University of Nevada, GBI advances applied research to support science-based adaptive management of public lands. The Institute is dedicated to the promotion of science through field studies programs, conservation practices, and public outreach. Their work is amazingly important, and getting to be a part of equipping their teams was an exciting opportunity for us. 

In November, Tracy had the opportunity to visit Samarkand State University and work with drone programs as a part of the Central Asian Rangelands: Global Challenges and Global Opportunities International Conference. She got to present and teach, visit plot sites for sage and forage kochia, and work with some members of the agricultural research community who came from Tashkent for this event to fly drone. You can also see the ongoing seeding of sagebrush that was being carried out during the time that Tracy was there. Drones are helping to change the state of rangeland management and agriculture all around the world, and our team is so excited to be a part of that. 

We had the opportunity recently to visit Sierra Lutheran High School in Carson City, Nevada to share about the history and applications of UAV technology, careers within the field, and connections to various scientific fields. Students asked great questions about how to get a pilot's license,  how drones apply to careers that they were interested, and their current use of hobby drones. Getting students excited about the opportunities that drones provide is one of the driving missions of the Drone Rangers, and so we are always excited to be able to share information about UAV technology.

We were able to make use of an extended version of the presentation that can be found on the education portal, and were able to bring drones and other equipment into the classroom so students could see what types of technology they might be working with in the future. ​

We are always excited to come and visit, so if you are a representative of a local school and interested in a visit, feel free to reach out on the Outreach Center page. 

Thanks Sierra Lutheran for letting us visit!