Coastal Grads Participate at AGU Conference in San Juan

College of Coastal Georgia alums Kaelyn Tyler and Travis Simmons, who graduated in May, traveled to San Juan, Puerto Rico in June to lead a session at the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) Frontiers in Hydrology meeting. Tyler convened a session on the methods for discovering and formatting open-source data sets for hydrologic research. Simmons was a co-convener for the session and also presented his research poster entitled, “LINDEX, an End-to-End Landsat-8 Timeseries Index Processing Framework.” His work focused on the usefulness of the LINDEX framework for research using satellite imagery.

This was the inaugural meeting for the hydrology section of AGU, which is approximately half of AGU’s membership, said Assistant Professor of Environmental Science, Dr. James Deemy.

“Their work will set a precedent for future organized sessions at subsequent Frontiers in Hydrology meetings,” Deemy said. “Additionally, this puts students from Coastal’s Department of Natural Sciences at the forefront of hydrologic research and will also be a great learning opportunity for them.”

Simmons said that the conference exposed he and Tyler to the cutting edge of hydrologic research. They had the opportunity to talk with researchers about a wide range of topics – from cave mapping to NASA satellite launch plans.

“We have made great international, professional contacts, and friends,” Simmons said. “Through this conference, Kaelyn has been able to further focus her research interest to groundwaters tracer work, and I have particularly enjoyed seeing how the hydrology community is applying machine learning techniques to satellite data.”

Their trip was supported by the Student Research Travel Fund from the Office of Undergraduate Research, provided by the College of Coastal Georgia Foundation. In academic year 2021-2022, the Office of Undergraduate Research was able to supplement travel expenses for 15 students to present their undergraduate research locally, nationally, and internationally.