On Tuesday, 9th April 2019, Sanjay Pyare, Ph.D, an Associate Professor from University of Alaska (USA) and Fulbright Scholar has an opportunity to visit Faculty of Geography, Universitas Gadjah Mada. He delivers a guest lecture about Seabird migration areas and coastal conservation-area planning across Indonesia. He investigate the Aleutian tern and its remarkable migration between Indonesia and Alaska, as well as study the role of coastal Indonesia ecosystems in seabird-migration patterns globally using GIS technology by applying geo-tracking data mapping method. His research as well related to the GIS-supported landscape assessments, Ground Truthing GIS and remotely sensed resources, landscape connectivity, habitat modeling and animal (especially Aleutian species) dispersal and movement, aquatic-terrestrial-marine interactions, hands-on and experiential education, and supporting the information needs of resource management.
In the end of the lecture, he talked about his vision forward. In the future, at a broader level, he seeks to use the science and the story of the Aleutian tern as a flagship to increase avenues for trans-boundary cooperation and increase the capacity of Indonesians to engage in science. Furthermore, he added that fundamentally his research in actual fact didn’t only related to scientific research or even the plight of the ocean environment and seabirds: the Aleutian tern is simply a global messenger about what two far flung cultures and two wild places of the earth have in common.