Field deployments and community engagement at Pinnacles National Park

Pinnacles National Park’s historic landscape serves both as critical habitat for bat species and as a focal point for local community interest and involvement. Earlier this month, Center for Pandemic Insights (CPI) Associate Director Karen Saylors, Program Manager David Coil, and Field Research Fellow Sarah Lagattuta spent two days in the park deploying technology, collecting environmental samples, and engaging with community members across the park and surrounding area.

Fieldwork was conducted in close coordination with National Park Service staff and guided by Pinnacles wildlife biologist Paul Johnson, whose expertise helped ensure all activities were carried out safely and with minimal disturbance to local wildlife. The primary objective of the field component was to evaluate how sensing and sampling technologies developed by CPI engineering teams perform under challenging and dynamic field conditions, such as varying temperatures, running water, and active wildlife. Technologies deployed during the visit included environmental sensors to characterize bat activity and habitat use, volatile organic compound samplers to assess population health signals, and LiDAR-based scanning systems used to generate 3-D maps to inform future field deployments. Together, these efforts support CPI’s ongoing exploration of non-invasive approaches to understanding bat population health and disease transmission dynamics.

The visit also strengthened opportunities for future collaboration between CPI, the National Park Service, and community stakeholders, as Dr. Saylors conducted interviews with local volunteers, students, teachers, Tribal partners, and neighbors. Continued engagement with these partners helps ensure this work remains grounded in educational outreach and long-term collaboration.