  The Wyoming Survey for H-alpha, or WySH, is a large-area, ground-based,
narrowband imaging survey for H-alpha-emitting galaxies over the latter half of
the age of the Universe. The survey spans several square degrees in a set of
fields of low Galactic cirrus emission. The observing program focuses on
multiple dz~0.02 epochs from z~0.16 to z~0.81 down to a uniform
(continuum+line) luminosity at each epoch of ~10^33 W uncorrected for
extinction (3sigma for a 3" diameter aperture). First results are presented
here for 98+208 galaxies observed over approximately 2 square degrees at
redshifts z~0.16 and 0.24, including preliminary luminosity functions at these
two epochs. These data clearly show an evolution with lookback time in the
volume-averaged cosmic star formation rate. Integrals of Schechter fits to the
extinction-corrected H-alpha luminosity functions indicate star formation rates
per co-moving volume of 0.009 and 0.014 h_70 M_sun/yr/Mpc^3 at z~0.16 and 0.24,
respectively. The formal uncertainties in the Schechter fits, based on this
initial subset of the survey, correspond to uncertainties in the cosmic star
formation rate density at the >~40% level; the tentative uncertainty due to
cosmic variance is 25%, estimated from separately carrying out the analysis on
data from the first two fields with substantial datasets.
