William Atkins
Wednesday, 13 May 2009 19:00
Science -
Climate
Page 2 of 3
According to the Environmental-Expert.com article “
Drinking water watched by Queensland’s seventh sense,” Dr. Matthew Dunbabin, CSIRO senior research scientist, stated,
“This is about real time data collection from the storage to the shore with a level of speed and detail not seen before.”
About 120 sensors have been placed either on the surface of the lake (about one-third of the total) or on land near the catchment area (the other two-thirds) in order to monitor the lake and its surrounding catchment (land) area.
Forty-five floating sensors measure temperature through a column of water. Another five floating sensors are considered weather stations, and monitor a series of conditions such as humidity, pH, wind speed and direction, and air pressure.
The seventy land sensors measure temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, soil moisture, and intensity of sunlight.
Three base stations collect and store the data, and send it to a remote database.
Together, they can operate as a
“meshed network”; that is, they team up to record environmental characteristics of the lake, which is then wirelessly transmitted to a central location for analysis.
The sensors (“floating nodes”) being placed on Lake Wivenhoe are seen on the ScienceImage.csiro.au website “
Remotely sensing Queensland drinking water.”
Page three concludes.
