Environmental Monitoring
Wireless sensor networks provide the ability to measure and record information about the natural environment at a spatial and temporal scale that has never previously been possible. Information from wireless sensor networks will transform our understanding of the environment, and will motivate and inform the development of new practices for environmental management.
Monitoring Rainforest Regeneration
A network of wireless sensor nodes in Queensland's Springbrook National Park is being used to monitor the recovery of the regenerating rainforest from previous agricultural grassland. Nodes are located in areas of open grassland, regenerating rainforest and old rainforest, where they monitor micro-climate indicators including temperature, humidity, leaf wetness, soil moisture, wind speed and wind direction. The sensor network provides a valuable research platform for the study of land-use change, the effects of invasive species on biodiversity, the ecological functioning of rainforests and the impacts of climate change.
The network will be expanded to 200 nodes over the next three years, and sensor capabilities will be extended to include further information such as light readings, rainfall, fog and water quality indicators. The network will also include nodes cabable of acoustic monitoring of frog, bird and bat populations, plus possible video monitoring and automatic identification of species to assess their population trends.
Each solar-powered sensor node broadcasts over a range of around 500 m, and transfer of data is via a series of node "hops" back to a base station where the data is uploaded to the Internet for analysis. The key technical challenge in building such networks is managing the energy budget of the nodes. Functions such as radio broadcasting (to transfer data between nodes), and audio and video processing must be managed carefully to conserve the small amount of energy available to the nodes via their solar panels. Future research work will investigate more sophisticated power management techniques, adaptive sample rates, and in-network statistics.
This project is a collaboration between CSIRO, the Queensland Government Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM), and the Australian Rainforest Conservation Society. For more information, please visit the project page at DERM.
Listening for Frogs
Frog populations are often used as a bioindicator of the health of waterway ecosystems, providing valuable information to water resource managers such as Seqwater, the water service provider for the South East Queensland region. With the support of Seqwater, CSIRO researchers are working to develop networks of acoustic sensors that can recognise, record, and ultimately classify frog vocalisations.
A trial network of six sensor nodes was set up in the upper catchment area of the Somerset Dam near Brisbane. This area is the critical habitat for three species of endangered frogs, with another two species which occured in the area until recently now presumed extinct. The sensor nodes recorded frog vocalisations and concurrent temperature and humidity readings for two hours each day over the summer of 2009. Data from the experiment is now being analysed by Seqwater.
Based on the success of the trial deployment, further research is underway to develop networks that are capable of automatically recognising and classifying frog species in real time. Future research will also investigate the use of video-processing for species recognition and classification.
Contacts
Publications
Recent publications relating to the use of wireless sensor networks for environmental monitoring:
- Wen Hu, Nirupama Bulusu, Chun Tung Chou, Andrew Taylor, Van Nghia Tran, Sanjay Jha. "The design and evaluation of a hybrid sensor network for cane-toad monitoring." ACM Trans. Sensor Networks. 2009; 5(1):Art. 4 (28 pp.).
- Darren Moore. "Demonstration of bird species detection using an acoustic wireless sensor network." 33rd IEEE International Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN 2008) : SenseApp 2008; Montreal, Que. IEEE; 2008: 730-731. ISBN: 9781424424122.
- Thanh Dang, Nirupama Bulusu, Wen Hu. "Lightweight Acoustic Classification For Cane-Toad Monitoring." Proceedings of the Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers, Pacific Grove, California, October 2008.
- Tim Wark, Wen Hu, Peter Corke, Jonathan Hodge, Aila Keto, Ben Mackey, Glenn Foley, Pavan Sikka, Michael Brünig. "Springbrook: challenges in developing a long-term, rainforest wireless sensor network." 4th International Conference on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing (ISSNIP 2008); Sydney, NSW. IEEE; 2008: 599-604.
