In today's New York Times, excellence science writer William J. Broad looks at how tiny, wireless sensor "motes" invented at UC Berkeley are now being used to study the environment. (I've written about similar efforts here for UC Berkeley. And I also worked on an Intel Research white paper about wireless sensor networks, entitled "Instrumenting The World.") From the NYT article:
Environmental sensor networks can help fill an observational gap between microscopes and telescopes, (Dust Inc. co-founder Rob Conant) remarked. "It's been hard to get vast information about swamps," Mr. Conant said. "This kind of technology fits very well because it lets people collect on a human scale…"
The James Reserve, some 90 miles southeast of Los Angeles on a mountain flank that is home to 1,500 species of plants and animals, including the yellow-legged frog and willow flycatcher, now bristles with enough monitoring gear to make it one of the world's most advanced tests of ecologic networking.
Wireless motes, cameras and other sensors track the nesting habits of birds, the life cycles of moss and the carbon dioxide uptake of various soils. Robots move along wires strung from tree to tree, lowering sensors to take temperature, humidity and light-level readings at different levels.
Thousands of miles away, scientists are starting a similar effort – but wet. They are designing floating robots, wireless sensors and distributed computers in an effort to better understand and improve the water quality of the Hudson River.
Link (free reg. required, NYT permalink generator is down) (via How To Save The World For Free)
