My first project as an intern at SkyTruth involved a potential mining threat flagged by a partner organization, Earthworks, whose mission is to protect communities and the environment from the adverse impacts of mineral and energy development.
During an all-staff meeting in February, Cameron listened to SkyTruth’s Technical Program Director Ry Covington present his work on mapping vegetation in the Colorado River Basin. He knew he wanted to be involved. So he reached out to Ry and asked if he could help build the visualization dashboard for this data.
When Cameron discovered the SkyTruth remote internship on a “tech for good” job board, he realized that Skytruth was a perfect fit.
As I finish up my internship at SkyTruth, I can honestly say that the experience has been everything I imagined it would be and more. My time here was a perfect amalgamation of what I love: namely, an organization that applies technology and gathers and analyzes data to protect the environment.
This blog post is the first in a three-part series describing SkyTruth’s effort to automate the detection of oil and gas well pads around the world using machine learning. This tool will allow local communities, conservationists, researchers, policymakers, and journalists to see for themselves the growth of drilling in the areas they care about.