Front Page News
August 5, 2009
Dr. Pete Marra’s research is featured on the August 2009 cover of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
On Jan 15, 2009 a US Airways plane took off from New Yorks LaGuardia Airport, colliding with a flock of geese approximately 2,900 feet above the ground, extensively damaging both engines five miles from the airport. The pilot was able to conduct an emergency landing in the Hudson River—all 155 people on board survived with few serious injuries.
Investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board later sent feathers and tissue extracted from the planes engines to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., for analysis. Carla Dove, scientist at the Smithsonian Feather Identification Lab at the National Museum of Natural History and Peter Marra, scientist at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center at the National Zoo, worked together to determine that it was Canada geese that caused the crash and that the population was migratory and not resident.
