A core mission of the Earth Scan Laboratory is to strengthen our community's understanding of the applications of satellite-based data towards important research endeavors. We believe that our work is at its best when it is widely disseminated and understood by the public. This mission requires reaching out to our community to elaborate the importance of oceanography and meteorology to our everyday lives and how our nation's space-based resources are working to grow these fields of study.
LSU Students Studying at the ESL
ESL Training Laboratory
The ESL trains and depends on undergraduate student workers for the daily operations of our facility. Numbering from two to five at a time, our students learn the technical processes of turning large datasets into significant research products that help our community better understand the ocean, the atmosphere, and the changes in our landscape.
The ESL also relies on graduate students for our larger projects. Our graduate students apply their background in coastal, geographic, atmospheric, or computer science towards furthering the research capabilities of our laboratory and supporting faculty.
The ESL's training laboratory is a suite of desktop workstations used for the laboratory component of graduate and undergraduate level classes such as OCS7170 - Satellite Oceanography. The ESL's historical data archives and galleries are used by faculty and staff all over the world to demonstrate events such as hurricanes, vegetation changes, circulation in the Gulf of Mexico, flooding along the Mississippi River delta, and the Deepwater Horizon blowout and its aftermath.
Many professors in LSU's School of the Coast and Environment use ESL images and animations to help explain large-scale oceanic and atmospheric phenomena in the classroom. Whether you are studying the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico, land loss in coastal zones, sediment transport, or hurricanes, you're likely to come across our imagery in LSU's classrooms.
The ESL Serving K-12 Education
The ESL has participated in events to help bring our research to K-12 education events in the Baton Rouge area for over a decade. In events such as Seagrant's Ocean Commotion and the BREC Highland Road Observatory's International Astronomy Day our students, staff and faculty have spoken with thousands of children about satellite-based research in hurricanes, changes along the Louisiana coast, and the relationship between our oceans, skies and lives. We are always happy to arrange visits to our facility for students and teachers, and we are always looking to collaborate with educators to help further the interest of our youth in the sciences.
ESL at Ocean Commotion 2013
