UB student awarded NASA fellowship to map biodiversity in South Africa

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Festus Adegbola, a University at Buffalo PhD student who is using remote sensing technology to monitor biodiversity from the air, has been awarded the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) Fellowship. 

Supporting graduate student research aligned with NASA’s Earth Science Division, the FINESST Fellowship provides $50,000 per year for up to three years to cover tuition, travel and research expenses. With an acceptance rate of just over 10%, it is one of the most competitive graduate fellowships in the country.

“I’m truly honored to receive this fellowship. It reflects consistency, hard work and the exceptional support I’ve received from the UB Department of Geography,” Adegbola, who is pursuing a PhD in geography with a concentration in Earth systems science. “My goal is to turn data into action, ensuring that conservation policies are grounded in rigorous science.”

Adegbola’s research uses data collected from remote sensing aircraft and satellites to model how plant traits and wildfire patterns influence bird diversity in South Africa’s Greater Cape Floristic Region, a biodiversity hotspot.

The work is part of the BioSCape project, which completed NASA’s first-ever biodiversity-focused campaign. Using a combination of aircraft equipped with remote sensing and field work, BioSCape collected data about the Greater Cape Floristic Region in late 2023 and published their first studies earlier this year.

BioSCape’s principal investigator is Adegbola’s advisor, Adam Wilson, PhD, associate professor of geography in the UB College of Arts and Sciences.

“NASA’s investment in Festus’s work is a testament to the scientific importance and real-world impact of his research,” says Wilson, who is part of both the UB Department of Geography and the Department of Environment and Sustainability. “Advanced remote sensing techniques will enable a better understanding of biodiversity and help build scalable tools for conservation in the face of global environmental change.”

Adegbola’s project will use imaging spectroscopy and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology from both BioSCape and NASA’s EMIT mission, the latter of which involves remote sensing from the International Space Station.

His goal is to quantify how plant functional traits influence bird species richness and abundance, assess how fire patterns affect habitat stability and avian diversity, and develop predictive models to guide conservation planning and identify biodiversity hotspots. 

“I’m excited about the global potential of this work to support more informed, evidence-based biodiversity management,” Adegbola says.

Adegbola holds a master’s degree in geographic information science from UB and a bachelor’s degree in wildlife management from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. 

He has co-authored peer-reviewed publications, contributed to a NASA-archived dataset recognized as a global benchmark in ecological acoustics, and presented at major conferences, including the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the American Association of Geographers (AAG) and EnviroCon. He has also worked on several conservation initiatives across West Africa. 

In addition to serving as president of the Geography Graduate Student Association at UB, Adegbola is a member of several professional societies, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Ornithological Society (AOS), the Nigerian Society for Environmental Conservation (NSEC), and Society for Conservation Biology (SCB). 

He is a recipient of the Spectral Ecology Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), as well as UB’s Charles H.V. Ebert Physical Geography Award and Abrahams-Woldenberg Field Award.