PARENT SESSION
Organized Oral Session 38: Sensors and sensor networks in ecology
Organizer(s): SD Wullschleger, RB Jackson, and TE Dawson
Wednesday, August 10, 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM, Meeting Room 516 A, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Micro to macroscopic embedded networked sensing of organisms and ecosystem processes: Lessons learned from the James Reserve Habitat Sensing Testbed.

Hamilton, Michael¹, ¹ University of Califormia, Idyllwild

ABSTRACT- The transformational potential of sensors and sensor networks for ecological research derives from their ability to provide coordinated, simultaneous multi-modal and multi-scale observational capability. Common to this vision is the widespread use of networked sensing to achieve the coordinated cross scale and heterogeneous observations. Moreover, a critical aspect of infrastructure is near real time access to the full spectra of live data (across scales and modalities), allowing the ecological researcher to assimilate the data into online models and heterogeneous datasets while in the field, interactively (as well as post facto), to guide adaptive measurements, augmented sampling, and calibration. Such access will transform ecological experimentation from a batch process into an interactive one, and thereby increase the rate and scope of exploration exponentially. The Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), a National Science Foundation Science & Technology Center established in August, 2002, conducts research in embedded networked sensing (ENS) for ecological observatories. Electrical engineers, computer scientists and biologists collaborate in the refinement of networked, durable, low power, in-situ sensing systems suitable for monitoring a wide range of environmental, chemical, and organismal patterns and processes above and below ground, at scales from microscopic to entire watersheds. The Center's field test bed located at the University of California, James San Jacinto Mountains Reserve has successfully deployed several unique, overlapping, multi-scale embedded sensor arrays, at fixed points and on mobile platforms. Several of these systems have been in operation for more than 3 years, providing continuous data streams every 5 minutes from 50 locations and hundreds of sensors and imagers. This talk will briefly describe the hardware and software system architectures, data types, database management, user interfaces, maintenance requirements, and future deployment plans.

Key words: sensor networks, CENS