Remote Environmental Monitoring With a Wireless Sensor Network System
Abstract
Wireless sensors have the potential to reveal dynamic environmental variables in remote landscapes at reduced long-term costs and offer a promising approach to revolutionize environmental monitoring. Better management of surface water in remote landscapes warrants close monitoring of moisture and temperature variability. This work describes field data demonstrating the functionality of a deployed wireless network system, consisting of various soil moisture sensors. Soil water potential sensors with an imbedded thermistor were deployed in a remote meadow along a topographic gradient with dense tree canopies in Wolverton Meadows in Sequoia National Park. The sensors responded to moisture and temperature variations and the wireless system met the goal of providing informative data on dynamic responses of soil moisture to rainfall and snowmelt. The deployed sensor system functioned well during harsh winter conditions at 7000 feet, requiring low power. The study highlights measurement accuracy limitations and presents an alternative, robust wireless Zigbee sensor network, using Crossbow motes. We demonstrate that deployment, implementation and long-term field monitoring in remote and challenging environments is possible with current technologies.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2007
- Bibcode:
- 2007AGUFM.H13A0971K
- Keywords:
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- 1848 Monitoring networks;
- 1863 Snow and ice (0736;
- 0738;
- 0776;
- 1827);
- 1866 Soil moisture;
- 1879 Watershed;
- 1895 Instruments and techniques: monitoring