Professor Raja Nagisetty and environmental engineering graduate student Meggie Olsen at Montana Tech, along with several other collaborators, completed a series of drone flights on the upper Clark Fork River to study thermal refugia habitat. Professor Raja and his team documented an unremediated reach of the Upper Clark Fork near Phase 7 and a section along Phase 8 at the confluence of Racetrack Creek and the Upper Clark Fork. Using a thermal imaging camera and post-production processing, the research team will create a high resolution (5 cm grid) thermal map of water temperatures to assess the impacts of cold-water springs, seeps, and the Racetrack Lake instream flow project on mainstem water temperatures. Water temperatures at the spring’s source were measured at 10 degrees Celsius during assessment before the flight. The Clark Fork Coalition and George Grant Trout Unlimited funded the project.