Queensland’s James Cook University is just weeks away from connecting more than 600 sensors at its Daintree Rainforest Observatory to the NBN, giving researchers access to real-time data and video feeds from the forest.
The university’s research station at Cape Tribulation provides accommodation for 55 researchers and students to study the Daintree rainforest and the nearby Great Barrier Reef.
The DRO’s centrepiece, installed around 15 years ago, is a 45-metre tall crane with a 55-metre boom and gondola that allows access to anywhere within a one-hectare plot of rainforest.
Over the past two years, the university has added more than 600 sensors to the forest in the area covered by the crane, many of which were custom-designed by students at JCU.
This includes 60 sap flow sensors, 60 automated dendrometer bands, 10 soil moisture pits, more than 90 temperature and humidity sensors, two weather stations and cameras continuously recording different aspects.
A future upgrade will also see water flow sensors added to an adjacent stream.
James Cook University e-research centre director Jeremy VanDerWal told iTnews a fibre-optic cable connects a server at the research station to the crane, with wi-fi used to link up the sensors.
“[For example] we have around 200 sensors measuring temperature and humidity from the ground to the canopy – one every metre. So we can see how rainfall humidity and rainfall changes from ground to canopy," he said.
“Some of research shows that you can get up to a 13 degree temperature difference from above the canopy to the ground.”
Data from the cameras and sensors is fed into an instance of the environmental data management system EnviroCOMS on the research station’s server, with a separate instance on the servers at the university’s Cairns campus.
Real-time connectivity
While the DRO could make a serious claim to having the world’s most connected rainforest, until now researchers have been hamstrung by the amount of satellite bandwidth available at the research station.
“What tends to happen is we hit our limit fairly quickly because have researchers collecting stuff in remote locations,” VanDerWal said.
“As part of the trip, they come to the DRO, and all the devices they have want to update because they have an internet connection. So that chews up our allocation.
“For the bulk of what we have to do, someone has to go up there every couple of months, collect the external hard drives and bring them back to Cairns where we get to see the full set of data.”
The bandwidth limitations have meant that, until now, researchers accessing data off-campus used the Cairns instance of EnviroCOMS, rather than the up-to-date data held on-site.
The situation is set to improve significantly on April 16, when the research station is connected to the NBN via satellite, meaning off-site researchers will be able to access real-time data from the rainforest.
The university also plans to also make real-time video feeds from the cameras available to the general public.
“That data is being collected and used for small investigations that people are doing, but there’s so much more knowledge that could be gleaned from this data,” VanDerWal said.
“So that’s where we’ll get our investment back. That’s what’s exciting. To get the NBN working up there, and to get real-time information back from that location allows us to start doing remote studies on what’s happening up there with real-time analytics.”
