Zealand Murphy Dobrowski
8th Grade, Missoula International School
Missoula, MT
When conditions get dry, plants are the first to know. But until they begin to wilt, it鈥檚 often hard to see that the greenery is losing moisture. 鈥淒irect measurements of fuel moisture content are time consuming and require destructive sampling,鈥� says Zealand. Dry plants make for excellent tinder for wildfires. If scientists could detect the water content of plants remotely, it 鈥渕ay help improve wildfire risk ratings.鈥� Zealand decided to measure the fuel moisture content (FMC) of leaves by using their color.
Can Hyperspectral Remote Sensing Be Used To Estimate Fuel Moisture Content?
Project Background
Zealand started with two peace lily plants. He watered the plants, waited half an hour and cut five leaves off each. Those leaves were allowed to dry in hot conditions while he measured their color with a spectrometer. Mass of a plant changes depending on how much water is in it, so Zealand weighed the leaves as they dried.
He was able to show that weight accounted for 70-89 percent of the change in the leaves鈥� color. This means that the color of the leaves could be used to measure their dryness. 鈥淭he logical next step would be to use remote estimates of FMC in natural environments to improve fire risk ratings,鈥� he says.
Beyond the Project
Zealand loves basketball. 鈥淚t is my dream to play basketball for a D1 college and have an academic scholarship,鈥� he says. He鈥檇 love to go to the University of California at Berkeley, 鈥渂ecause my parents went there.鈥� Zealand also studies Aikido. He could be a physicist, or a chemist. 鈥淚 really want to find the deep secrets of the world and want to know why the universe was created,鈥� he says.
