Amazon Rainforest Biodiversity Monitoring

April 22nd, 2017

A team of scientists from Australia, Brazil and Spain have joined forces to develop the most sophisticated remote monitoring system ever used to track the diminishing biodiversity of South America’s Amazon Jungle.

The project is revolutionising the way biodiversity is monitored by creating a distributed, wireless sensor network throughout the jungle with autonomous nodes that continuously monitor wildlife under the canopy of the Amazon Forest. . The Distributed Sensing Systems Group is leading the sensor node and network design for this environment, which is extremely challenging for energy harvesting and wireless communication, as well as the distributed detection and classification of wildlife species. The following figure provides an overview of the planned network architecture.

The figures below show the current prototypes of the camera and micro nodes during the first data collection phase of the project in the Amazon rainforest.

Providence camera node (current prototype)

 

Providence micro node (current prototype)

 

For more information on the project, please refer to the Providence Project page.