FIU-ALTA Partnership Captures High-Resolution Images of SLR

A collaboration between a Miami area high-tech company and Florida International University has improved ways to capture South Florida’s environment to help scientists, citizens, and local governments prepare for future storms and rising seas.

Already, ALTA Systems (www.altapic.com) and scientists with Florida International University collaborated earlier this year to gather high resolution images of all of the City of Sweetwater. In that project, researchers used five balloons from 100 to 200 feet in the sky and a ground image system to capture 18,305 aerial images and 32,320 street level images.

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Eyesontherise.org team member and Florida International University School of Journalism and Mass Communication professor Kate MacMillin will be sharing her thoughts on engagement and communication related to sea level rise on Monday, Oct. 6 at Florida Atlantic University.

MacMillin joins FAU faculty, media activists and artists to express how public engagement that occurs throughout our universities can also be framed as artistic and activist expression.

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Millions displaced from New Orleans and other Southern cities following Hurricane Katrina.

Hundreds of thousands forced from Detroit neighborhoods.

Thousands more moved throughout the Midwest as cities like Chicago change their affordable housing plans.
Each of these cases have the same thing in common – the forced migration of dark skinned U.S. citizens – something that may at some point happen in South Florida as land grabs for the rich occur during a time of rising seas.

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FIU School of Journalism & Mass Communication Prepares for Oct. 9 Event on Miami Beach

A few minutes ago, Pamela Cruz was dipping her audible water sensor in a plastic cup filled with a mild amount of salt water.

Silence.

Now, at the edge of Biscayne Bay at Florida International University’s North Miami campus, in waters that hold higher levels of salt, her coqui sensor buzzes.

“I really like these sensors,” Cruz said. “When I heard it I got really excited because we made it work. We are a part of something big.”

Cruz and roughly 40 of her fellow high school students from MAST at FIU, a public high school that’s located on the FIU campus, spent much of Wednesday and Thursday this week testing coqui sensors in preparation for using them to measure expected flood waters next week on Miami Beach.

Thursday’s experience was to see how well the sensors could pick up salt water and, through their chirps, indicate the level of salt water in the sample.

“We are testing out the water samples based on the salinity of the water because salt conducts electricity,” said high school student Eli Sosa. “The more salt, the more electricity. We get feedback through speakers that on electricity increase the hertz.”

And with the knowledge of how to work the sensors and report their findings, students will be armed on Oct. 9 to join a group of 30 other Miami-Dade high school and college students as part of a citizen science, crowd hydrology event led by FIU’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

More than 70 high school and college students from Miami-Dade County will spend several hours examining potential flood waters on Miami Beach on Oct. 9 as part of King Tide Day, the day when tides have led to massive flooding throughout parts of South Florida.

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Eyesontherise.org team members Susan Jacobson, Kate MacMillin and Juliet Pinto have been attending the Annual Southeast Florida Regional Climate Leadership Summit on Miami Beach.

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Students from MAST @ FIU BBC, a public high school that’s part of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools and housed at Florida International University’s Biscayne Bay Campus, with the support of FIU’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, spent Wednesday morning building coqui sensors that they will use for their upcoming King Tide Day events on Alton Road in Miami Beach on Oct. 9.

“This is a great and new experience,”said Noe Ley, a 10th grader at MAST @ FIU. “It really impressed me how a little breadboard could have as many abilities and different functions.”

More training is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 2 when students will construct and test water sensors in campus access to the Biscayne Bay and in nearby ponds with plans to use them to examine salinity in potential flood waters on Miami Beach during King Tide Day.

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More than 220 people (190 high school students from MAST @ FIU) showed up for a sea level rise rally at FIU’s Biscayne Bay Campus on Sept. 29 to launch an Oct. 9 effort to take high school and college students to Miami Beach to measure possible flood waters. In addition to the rally, students[…]

Eyes on the Rise team member, Robert Gutsche, Jr. spoke about the project at the Online News Association conference in Chicago on Sept. 26. Watch the panel here. ONA organized the Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education, which supports this student and community project surrounding journalism about sea level rise in South Florida.