South Salem High students pitch drone to monitor Detroit Lake algae blooms

Detroit Lake was infected last summer with a harmful algae bloom, contaminating Salem's main drinking water source and leaving tens of thousands without clean water for weeks.

To prevent it from happening again, a team of South Salem High School students are proposing that a drone take photos of the water to identify areas that may have a potentially harmful bloom before it becomes a crisis.

South Salem's team is comprised of three juniors — Julie Chen, Mason Obery and Ned Harlan — and led by teacher Warren Trotter.

Selected from thousands of entries nationwide, the group's proposal has been named the Oregon state winner in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Contest.

They are among the 50 state winners and will receive $20,000 in technology for their achievement so far.

The team also received a Samsung video kit Friday, which they will use over the next month to create and submit a three-minute video showcasing their project and how it addresses the issue.

If they progress after that, they would be among the top 10 teams in the country, have the chance to win tens of thousands of dollars more in technology and present their project in Washington, D.C. 

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Using drones to monitor algae blooms

The South Salem students said it was an easy choice to work on preventing more harmful algae blooms because they were all affected by it last summer. 

Chen's mother, who works as a pediatrician, saw an influx in patients. Everyone was buying bottled water. And Chen said there could be long-lasting environmental impacts if these harmful blooms occur regularly.

Harlan said the biggest issue was the amount of time it took for officials to test the water and determine it was harmful, all while people were drinking contaminated water for two weeks. 

The students are proposing the use of an artificial intelligence drone with a "convolutional neural network," an algorithm that analyzes an image and differentiates between various elements in it based on pre-set programming. 

In other words, the drone would scan Detroit Lake and take various images, than analyze the images and determine if any areas harbor large amounts of algae or harmful bacteria.

Theoretically, the collected information would be reviewed regularly and alert officials of potential spreading before it happens or is consumed.

"The less time (people are) drinking bad water, the better," Chen said.

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The team is working off data sets from Willow Creek Reservoir near Heppner in Eastern Oregon to create their own. This is the closest body of water where similar drone technology has been used to identify bacteria in the water, though other bodies of water in the U.S., such as Lake Erie, have been analyzed this way, too.

By applying the data sets from Willow Creek, the students will assign certain weights and values to what's captured in the photos at Detroit Lake and train the drone to identify the algae.

The Solve for Tomorrow contest

The Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Contest encourages teachers and students to solve real-world issues in their community using classroom skills in science, technology, engineering and mat, or STEM, Samsung said in a recent press release. 

Officials said classrooms are identifying issues unique to their communities — such as emergency relief in the face of natural disasters and access to food — as well as critical societal issues impacting classrooms nationwide — such as mental health, school shootings, vaping, bullying, homelessness and veteran care.

The 10 national finalists will be selected to attend a "pitch event" in the spring where they will present their project to a panel of judges.

For achieving national finalist status, seven schools will receive a $50,000 Samsung technology package, officials said. The other three will progress to the national winner stage.

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Three national winners will be selected, each of which will receive a $100,000 Samsung technology package.

Additionally, the general public will elect one winner from the 10 national finalists who will be eligible to win an additional $10,000 Samsung technology package.

If the Salem team is selected as a national finalist, they will fly to Washington, D.C., in the spring to present their prototype. 

For more information, go to www.samsung.com/us/solvefortomorrow/ or call South Salem High School at 503-399-3252.

Contact reporter Natalie Pate at npate@StatesmanJournal.com, 503-399-6745 or follow her on Twitter @Nataliempate or Facebook at www.Facebook.com/nataliepatejournalist.

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