The National Geographic Society has awarded a grant to doctoral student Sonja Schmoyer for research on endangered hemlock trees. She is one of the first 20 recipients of conservation grants under National Geographic’s American Keystones initiative, which supports efforts to protect the country’s ecological, cultural and economic pillars as the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary.

For more than 50 years the tiny aphid-like hemlock wooly adelgid has been killing eastern and Carolina hemlocks across the Appalachian Mountains, and their damage now extends from Maine to the Carolinas and as far west as Michigan. Schmoyer’s work involves gathering data on hemlock populations with drones and hyperspectral imaging and using that data to train a machine learning algorithm. As Schmoyer states, “Maps resulting from this project would serve as a critical tool for land and forest management and support more informed decision making and monitoring.”

Schmoyer, who is engaged in dissertation research for her PhD in geology in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, is working with multiple organizations, including the Tennessee Department of Agriculture’s hemlock woolly adelgid strike teams and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where one of four study sites across Tennessee is located.

Learn more about Schmoyer and her work at the College of Arts and Sciences