UCSC M.A. in GIS Spatial Technologies, Applications, and Research

🛰️ How is AI reshaping the maps we use every day? 🤔

CISR Bytes is back! Join us for our next talk:
Vectors, Rasters, and Robots: Navigating the Shift from Digital Cartography to Spatial AI

Featuring two Google Maps veterans, Dr. Megan Goddard and Kailen Wright, in conversation about where geospatial work is heading.

📍 ISB 221, UC Santa Cruz 🗓️ Friday, May 22 · 3–4 PM

Open to all! Bring a friend!

🌍 Happy Earth Day from GISTAR and the GeoFly Lab! 🌿

Today we’re celebrating by spotlighting one of our biggest projects: Monitoring seagrass health along the Pacific coast using drones, field ecology, and AI-driven geospatial analysis.

Seagrass meadows are unsung heroes of our coastlines: stabilizing shorelines, filtering water, supporting marine life, and storing blue carbon. But eelgrass faces growing threats from wasting disease, warming waters, and nutrient loading, making monitoring more important than ever.

Since 2019, our team and collaborators across 8+ universities have surveyed 33 sites from Alaska to Southern California, capturing 50,000+ high-resolution UAV images and videos. We combine RGB and multispectral drone imagery with computer vision to turn pixels into ecological insights 🛰️🌊

Swipe through to learn more, and check the link in our bio to get involved!
🔗 geofly.io
🔗 envs.ucsc.edu/graduate/ma-program.html



Post Accessibility Description:
Slide 1: Happy Earth Day 04/22/2026 graphic from GISTAR and the GeoFly Lab, with both logos over an aerial photo of islands and ocean and a stylized Earth illustration.
Slide 2: “How is GISTAR helping the Earth?” over an aerial photo of two paddleboarders in clear water collecting seagrass samples.
Slide 3: “What are we looking at?” over a drone photo of researchers in an exposed tidal seagrass meadow, with text about UAV mapping and AI-driven analysis.
Slide 4: “Why seagrass?” with an aerial photo of a researcher on a paddleboard in dense eelgrass, and text about wasting disease threats.
Slide 5: List of survey sites spanning Alaska to Southern California (33 sites total) over a misty forested coastline.
Slide 6: Text highlighting 50,000+ UAV images captured, AI/computer vision methods, and collaboration with 8+ universities, over a coastal ocean scene.
Slide 7: “Get Involved!” closing slide with links to the GISTAR M.A. program and geofly.io, with logos over an aerial shoreline view.

⭐️ Last week, the GISTAR and GeoFly Lab team had the incredible opportunity to attend and showcase their program and research at the 2026 AAG (Association of American Geographers 🗺️) Annual Meeting in San Francisco! 🌁

They had an incredible time, attending high-profile sessions and networking in the field, as well as sharing their own critical research, examining “the interplay of technology and geography!”🌐