Wireless sensors are making the capture of important environmental measurements much easier, particularly in harsh environments such as the Costa Rican rainforest where more than 13 feet of rain falls each year. A team of researchers led by Philip Rundel at the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) at the Univ. of California, Los Angeles, are developing a sensor network at the La Selva Biological Station in north-central Costa Rica to develop a baseline for studying the impact of global warming in a tropical rainforest environment.
A recent grant of $785,000 from the National Science Foundation has provided funds to upgrade the sensor network and to provide a more dynamic 3D view of rainforest canopy. In addition to sensors to measure climate, wind, carbon dioxide as well as video and acoustic measurement to monitor plants and animals. The researchers chose SensorKit technology for the infrastructure of the sensor web. The data will be used to analyze spatial and temporal dynamics of the area using LabVIEW software.
According to Rundel, it may take as many as 10 years of testing, model development and data analysis until researchers are able to provide reliable data on the carbon flux within a tropical forest environment.
Read more about this project via Laboratory Equipment magazine and in this story in Scientific American.
