Devices are peppered across forests and national parks, attached to trees or the backs of animals. They record data that are key to understanding the environment
had not been seen in seven years when it caught the attention of Alex Rogers, an ecologist and computer scientist at the University of Oxford. The insect is the only cicada native to the British Isles. It spends 7-8 years underground as a nymph, then emerges, reproduces and dies within six weeks. During its short adult life, it produces a high-pitched hiss that would make it easier to detect, were it not at the upper limit of human hearing. Its call is audible to children but not to most adults.
The AudioMoth is just one example of the explosion in the use of sensors to monitor ecosystems that has occurred in the past decade. Such devices are peppered across forests and national parks, attached to trees or the backs of animals. As well as recording environmental data, such as temperature or humidity, they also monitor the nature, number and movement of living things.
Technologies borrowed from the smartphone industry, including batteries, cameras, microphones and chips, have helped make such sensors smaller, cheaper and more capable. Before the Icarus project developed its five-gram sensors, most radio tags weighed 15-20g. A future version will reduce the weight to just one gram, allowing the tags to be attached to even smaller creatures. Smartphone technology has also reduced the cost and size of camera traps.
As sensors get smarter, they are increasingly able to process data themselves—at the network edge, rather than centrally in the cloud—which reduces the need to transmit or store data unnecessarily. If sensors are networked, they can also raise the alarm right away if they spot something important. TrailGuard is different from most camera traps in that it is built to identify poachers, rather than wildlife.
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