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Environmental Sensing Is Here, Tracking Everything from Forest Fires to Threatened Species
The internet of things turned every device in your house into a smart something. Now it’s coming for nature—to track forest fires and tree health or to listen out for threatened animals.
But there are subtle signs of human intervention: small electronic devices gathering vital data on potential threats such as drought or pests and transmitting them miles away. Wallrabe and her fellow researchers are working on a range of devices that will be deployed from the ground to the treetops, transmitting data from Germany’s Black Forest to their labs at the University of Freiburg. Plant-e, a Dutch company spun out of Wageningen University, makes use of a natural process: Plants produce organic material through photosynthesis; some they use for growth, the rest ends up into the soil.
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