Emmett Kearns

Undergraduate Fellow, Team Humans

“Everybody is trying to learn new things and uncover mysteries in a way.”

Emmett Kearns is back for his second summer. He is one of six members of Team Humans, diving headfirst into Tyson’s mostly untouched past.

“Last summer, I was on Team Flora doing general biodiversity surveying. We'd also been reading all these historical accounts of the flora of Tyson and noticed that people's descriptions of the Tyson landscape were fairly different from the Tyson landscape that we observe now. I did a project looking at the historic land cover at Tyson as it's changed over time from 1937 military flyover imaging over this plot. I used those records to map tree cover and any development or surface water to see how it’s changed over time.”

Before heading off to the University of Hawai’i to begin his master’s degree in botany this fall, Emmett is determined to answer his lingering questions. 

“I’ve been learning about all the different people who owned land [and enslaved people] at Tyson in the past 200 years since the European [settler] era started. I’m creating a more fleshed out history webpage and have written 26 timelines and profiles of the different landowners of what is now Tyson.”

One essential question remains.

“I need to know who Tyson was named after. It’s been bothering me.”