Biodiversity Monitoring in the Amazon Rainforest

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 will revolutionise 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 team has been granted nearly $2 million by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a philanthropic funding body established by Gordon Moore – the founder of Intel – to carry out the first stage of this biodiversity monitoring project.

The project kicked-off this week in a meeting between all the partners in Brisbane. The Distributed Sensing Systems Group will lead the sensor node and network design for this environment, which is extremely challenging for energy harvesting and wireless communication, as well as the detection and classification of wildlife species.

More information can be found in the CSIRO media release and the project page.