Alyssa Farnes is a first-year master's student at Brigham Young University working with Jani Radebaugh since August 2026. 

Alyssa's area of research focuses on characterizing dune and interdune composition from drone visible and thermal imagery at Earth analog sites in Alaska (extreme cold dunes) and Namibia (transverse dunes) that resemble Titan. She will develop Earth proxies for remote sensing of solar system dune processes to inform future NASA Dragonfly mission observations.

In 2023, she completed an internship at Rocky Mountain Environmental Associates in Idaho Falls, ID as a Geoscience Technician. She utilized cartography through ArcGIS Pro to create maps and figures for environmental assessments. In 2022, she worked at the ISU GIS Training and Research Center as a GIS Technician to research how to use satellite remote sensing and GIS to identify vulnerabilities in the power grid due to wildfire. This project contributed to the completion of her Honors Senior Thesis and is published in the peer-reviewed journal Fire.

After graduating with her master’s degree, Alyssa aspires to pursue a career researching public lands, Earth observation, and science communication. She enjoys spending her free time hiking, practicing photography, and playing the piano.

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She has developed skills in classes, in the field, and at the workplace, including:

• Proficiency in ArcGIS Pro/Online and experience with ENVI and IDRISI TerrSet

• Water quality and stream discharge monitoring with HOBO sensors, SonTek FlowTracker, and YSI Pro 30

• Collaborating with scientific teams to develop research questions, obtain data (both field samples and remotely sensed data), and analyze data for publication