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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’s often hard to see that the greenery is losing moisture. “Direct measurements of fuel moisture content are time consuming and require destructive sampling,” says Zealand. Dry plants make for excellent tinder for wildfires. If scientists could detect the water content of plants remotely, it “may help improve wildfire risk ratings.” 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?

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2024 Thermo Fisher JIC Finalist Zealand Murphy Dobrowski poster
Dehydration Observation: Can Hyperspectral Remote Sensing Be Used To Estimate Fuel Moisture Content? Zealand Murphy Dobrowski
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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’ color. This means that the color of the leaves could be used to measure their dryness. “The logical next step would be to use remote estimates of FMC in natural environments to improve fire risk ratings,” he says.

2024 Thermo Fisher JIC Finalist Zealand Murphy Dobrowski with project at Public Day in Washington, DC
Lisa Fryklund/Licensed by Society for Science

Beyond the Project

Zealand loves basketball. “It is my dream to play basketball for a D1 college and have an academic scholarship,” he says. He’d love to go to the University of California at Berkeley, “because my parents went there.” Zealand also studies Aikido. He could be a physicist, or a chemist. “I really want to find the deep secrets of the world and want to know why the universe was created,” he says.

2024 Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge (JIC) Finalist - portrait
Lisa Fryklund/Licensed by Society for Science