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News PI-CASC shares educational resources at Guam educators summit

PI-CASC shares educational resources at Guam educators summit

A woman in the background is giving a presentation to a group of people seated in front of her, in an indoor classroom.

The PI-CASC team at the University of Guam presented ongoing research for coral reef mapping on the island and shared educational materials and resources to teachers on January 25 at the 2023 Service Learning, Youth, and Community Preparedness Summit.

The summit, spearheaded by Guam Homeland Security and Guam Department of Education, highlighted service learning opportunities with the Guam Youth Preparedness Program. Teachers and students were connected with resources for environmental advocacy that they can participate in and apply to their service learning planning.

PI-CASC UOG lead Romina King and communications lead John I. Borja presented on the value of Guam’s coral reefs and how they are impacted by climate change. King described the ambitious high-precision, 3-D mapping mission for Guam’s priority coral reefs using Fluid Lensing technology developed by NASA. The team also shared the PI-CASC K-12 Education Hub as an additional resource that they can supplement their lesson plans with.

People are standing around an unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, outside on a grassy area.
Research assistant Dong Won Lee (red shirt), gives a demonstration on drones to teachers.

The coral reef mapping project is a multi-agency effort to provide state-of-the-art resources and data to natural resource managers to better monitor coral reefs. For PI-CASC’s role, King and co-principal investigator Ved Chirayath are looking into using the Multispectral Imaging, Detection, and Active Reflectance instrument (MiDAR) and Fluid Lensing as tools for conducting quicker and more accurate assessments of coral bleaching.

For the summit, PI-CASC also partnered with NASA Guam Space Grant and NASA Guam EPSCoR to talk about the UOG Drone Corps program, which aims to build a cadre of licensed and responsible drone pilots. Keanno Fausto, NASA Guam Space Grant communications coordinator, led the presentation on the responsible use of drones and how the technology has been a key driver for the mapping mission, as well as surveying and monitoring excursions for natural resource agencies.