{"id":17,"date":"2018-03-27T19:40:32","date_gmt":"2018-03-27T19:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/collegeofforestry\/?p=17"},"modified":"2018-08-01T00:37:45","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T00:37:45","slug":"zach-leslie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/collegeofforestry\/2018\/03\/27\/zach-leslie\/","title":{"rendered":"Zach Leslie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zachary Leslie<\/strong> spent his 2017 fall term in Chile<\/a> working with terrestrial LIDAR. It\u2019s something he never imagined when he came to Oregon State to study engineering.<\/p>\n

\u201cI declared a major in forest engineering<\/a> after a friend and I agreed to do it together.\u201d Leslie explains. \u201cWe were going to do it together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leslie\u2019s friend changed majors shortly after making the deal, but for him, it stuck.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe professors were what really made me love studying forest engineering,\u201d Leslie says. \u201cThey\u2019re genuinely nice people, and my teachers and classmates feel more like family and friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a junior, Leslie visited the College of Forestry\u2019s international programs<\/a> office to find out where he could travel and participate in an international internship in order to fulfil the required six-months of work experience for his degree.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve done little traveling throughout my life,\u201d Leslie says. \u201cAnd I really wanted to go out and see the world to experience different cultures and ideas. I wanted to work somewhere unique than a locally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Director of International Programs Michele Justice<\/strong> pointed him toward New Zealand. There, he spent three months working for a research institute in his 2017 summer term.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother student and I measured Douglas-fir progeny trials through a variety of characteristics.\u00a0 The seeds came from Washington, Oregon, and California, so it was pretty neat to my state tree being used 6000 miles away,\u201d Leslie says.<\/p>\n

In New Zealand, he saw first-hand how different ecosystems impact growth rates of trees.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew Zealand has a similar moisture content as the Northwest. However, they have moisture is spread throughout the year so the summers are not as harsh.\u00a0 Therefore, plants have availability year round which results in faster growing rates and a shorter rotation,\u201d Leslie explains.<\/p>\n

His first international experience made Leslie hungry for more, and because of the connections Oregon State has with Chile through the College of Forestry\u2019s Chile Initiative, Leslie had the opportunity to take part in research and gain more work experience at the Universidad Austral de Chile<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During this trip, Leslie experienced a bit more culture shock due to the language barriers, but working with exciting technology in his chosen field lessened the frustration.<\/p>\n

LIDAR stands for light detection and ranging and is a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges to the Earth. Leslie used terrestrial LIDAR to understand the volume of trees in Chilean forests.<\/p>\n

Leslie isn\u2019t sure what his future holds, but he\u2019s interested in attending graduate school<\/a> so he can delve into the uses of LIDAR and unmanned aircraft.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can hook thermal cameras to unmanned aircraft to find an extinguish fires and hot spots,\u201d Leslie says. \u201cI would like to learn and research more ways to protect and manage our forest sustainably and efficiently.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zachary Leslie spent his 2017 fall term in Chile working with terrestrial LIDAR. It\u2019s something he never imagined when he came to Oregon State to study engineering. \u201cI declared a major in forest engineering after a friend and I agreed to do it together.\u201d Leslie explains. \u201cWe were going to do it together.\u201d Leslie\u2019s friend… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5291,"featured_media":18,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213751,110163,1292537],"tags":[349,109828,1758,200562,1398,23,155,1046,53],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-students","category-focus","category-international-programs","tag-chile","tag-college-of-forestry","tag-forestry","tag-new-zealand","tag-oregon","tag-oregon-state","tag-oregon-state-university","tag-study-abroad","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/collegeofforestry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/collegeofforestry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/collegeofforestry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/collegeofforestry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/collegeofforestry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/collegeofforestry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/collegeofforestry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/collegeofforestry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/collegeofforestry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/collegeofforestry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/collegeofforestry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}