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Ecological Monitoring Using Wireless Sensor Networks-—Overview, Challenges, and Opportunities

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Advancement in Sensing Technology

Part of the book series: Smart Sensors, Measurement and Instrumentation ((SSMI,volume 1))

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) offer a powerful feasible integration of distributed sensing capability, real-time data analysis, and remote surveillance due to the combined result of miniaturization of electronic devices and availability of powerful computational capability, larger information storage, and ubiquitous Internet connection. With these advances, WSNs are starting to be translated into a new ecological knowledge. They are providing a new insight into the observation of the world in new ways of extended spatial and temporal scales. Through WSNs, more unexpected phenomena can be obtained, and new paradigms can be developed. Recently, more and more ecological WSNs have been established, and lagre WSNs are deployed to monitor habitats with different scales. The research in the temporal scale ranges from the evaluation of soil moisture dynamics at several minutes to daily precipitation. Spatial measurements, on the other hand, range from the evaluation of global climate change to those related to the monitoring of forest and riparian environments in the range of a few meters. Although we are seeing more use of ecological WSNs, opportunities and challenges begin to be realized, including newly better design of software and hardware, formulation of new questions, discovery of previously unobservable phenomena, and development of new sensors, etc.

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  1. National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Chia-Pang Chen, Cheng-Long Chuang & Joe-Air Jiang

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  1. School of Engineering and Advanced Techn, AgHort Bldg A, Rm 3.77, Massey University (Manawatu Campus), Manawatu Campus, Palmerston North, 4410, New Zealand

    Subhas Chandra Mukhopadhyay

  2. Institute of Fundamental Sciences (IFS), Massey University (Turitea), Woodgate Court 12, Palmerston North, 4442, New Zealand

    Krishanthi P. Jayasundera

  3. , Inst. of Elect. Measurement, Graz University of Technology, Kopernikusgasse 24/IV, Graz, 8010, Austria

    Anton Fuchs

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Chen, CP., Chuang, CL., Jiang, JA. (2013). Ecological Monitoring Using Wireless Sensor Networks-—Overview, Challenges, and Opportunities. In: Mukhopadhyay, S., Jayasundera, K., Fuchs, A. (eds) Advancement in Sensing Technology. Smart Sensors, Measurement and Instrumentation, vol 1. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32180-1_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32180-1_1

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